Do: Know what you're doing and plan ahead
Don't: Get overly cocky expect too much
'Ey, we've had some pretty tough times. Not something someone can't get through without trying. I think light (and life, too) did their very best, that's a win to me, at least. Heh. We had a good run, woulda been better without the unnecessary drama, but we pushed ourselves to be our best we could be. Yay, we lasted until round 7 at least, and for my first time being general, it wasn't all that bad, I enjoyed it (mishaps not included).
Dragons, oh man, where would I have been without your help? We'd have been dead rounds ago without you, so thank you, for staying around even if you wanted to leave, I appreciate it. You've given us so much, and we all learned from teh mighty DRAGONZ this war, you were a bit like a teacher, showing me different strategies against different teams, I appreciate it, and I know the rest of the team does too.
Silver, you didn't do too bad for your first war, you held your head high where I didn't, and you kept us all in shape ^^ never forget that you have a great potential for war, even if it isn't your thing, I hope you come back next war, and maybe we can do better! :)
ARTHA, yes you! I appreciate you sticking around, it must've gotten pretty boring listening to me and dragons talk about decks and stuff, sorry lol. But still, thank you, you helped everyone alot, I don't know what else to say, other than that you were a great team mate, 10/10 would use you in war again. you opened my eyes to alot of things, never will forget~
Serprex, I wish you had stayed around to finish this with us, but I wanna say I appreciate you tagging along for a little while, you were a great help regardless of how you felt about this community during the first bit of drama we faced this war. I hope you and Kae are having a good time, you will be missed by everyone... :'(
We did good together team, never forget it, and I think we made some memories together. Thanks to each and every one of you, for finishing with me on this.
:darknessbig (http://elementscommunity.org/images/Art/Drain_Life.jpg)(http://elementscommunity.org/images/Art/Nightfall.jpg)(http://elementscommunity.org/images/Art/Ash.jpg) :darknessbig
The night was old and worn, lingering over ashen fields and the smouldering ruins of a once-great kingdom. Time had not been kind to those of that proud allegiance, whose armies had once held sway over the squabbling tribes of the continent. Once, there had been an empire, stretching from the Great Northern Sea to the Forge Mountains of the South, from the depths of the Burrowing to the limitless heights of the Heavensphere. No more.
The first sign came from the earth. The ground shook and trembled, sundering palace and village alike. The people of darkness fled as their towers, once beacons of might, crashed and fell upon them. Amidst the panic and flight, the immortal priests of earth rose with vindication. "Darkness will fall!" They cried, and from the depths came great hulks of stone, impervious to ripping fangs or alchemical spells. The golems marched unopposed into the chaos, and the earth elementals rejoiced.
The second sign came from the water. As the earth shifted and cracked, the seas withdrew, as if mirroring the people in their flight from the wrath of the earth. A great bounty of fish lay on the ground, and the people rushed to scavenge supplies for the long journey ahead. But this was not to be, for the sea had made a deception. "Darkness will fall!" Came the shout, and the waves came roaring back as if in rage for the attempted salvage. From the abyss too came strange creatures, dwellers of the sea that crawled or swam in unusual patterns. They had patiently bidden their time, and now they snatched the denizens of darkness into the crashing water. The squids plundered their fill from the refugees, and the water elementals rejoiced.
The third sign came from the gravitons. As the survivors of the earthquake assault and the tsunami raid retreated and organized their defenses, they came across the famous band of mercenaries and soldiers clad in orange and black. "A party of guardsmen! We are saved!" cried one. But this was not to be, for the captain of the guard was a wily and experienced commander. He had predicted this encounter, and he knew that the real threat had not yet come. He needed more resources, and so he gave the order. "Darkness must fall!" he ordered, and his company fell upon the retreating survivors. The Graviton Guards secured their supplies, and the gravity elementals rejoiced.
The fourth sign came from the air. As those who had fled the fall of their crumbling cities, escaped the deceptive waves, and evaded capture by the treacherous Gravitons scattered, another party watched the fight carefully. Swarms of small flies followed their retreat, tracking and predicting their path. "Darkness must fall," came the whisper, and the sky dragons blitzed into action. As the wyrms dove into the enemy, the air elementals rejoiced.
As the remnants of the Darkness Army gathered at the capital, the commander's tent was in a frenzy. Andretimpa sat in a corner, dazed in a drunken stupor as the other officers calmly and methodically analyzed their situation.
"Where are those dragons?" Aves demanded. "I want them here and I want them here yesterday! I don't care if they're at 1 HP, we need to send out something to match the enemy's movments!"
"Scouts report movement in the eastern pass! We've got rogue graboids!" RapidStar_ reported. "We're out of lightning in that sector! Requesting orders!"
"The squids are loose, can't contain them! Requesting reinforcements!" cried Sera.
"THE VAULT! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE VAULT?" Zawadx shrieked.
Everybody turned to the large safe in the tent. There was a gaping hole in the middle of it. "Zawadx, that's been there for three weeks."
"Oh."
"REVENGE FOR WAR 9!" Solaris cackled, and the tent was flooded in frogs.
Well, that was fun to write. It's been a while since I've written anything for war! Something less fun to write about is our finish in fifth place. It was a disappointing end, and I know that we had the potential to do better. I guess it's time to wave the banner one last time before hanging it up.
(http://elementscommunity.org/forum/Themes/default/images/theme/darkness_reign.png)
To my Team: Friends! Comrades! Soldiers of Team Darkness! We made it to round 10. Ten weeks of spending 3.5 days on deck prep and testing and mindgating. That's a lot of work you guys have put in. And while that's not quite the achievement we were all looking for, we are still better than those poor sods in sixth! I'm proud of the effort you've all shown. We all had a few issues with activity, but those things happen, and we were able to work around that. We tried our best, and we had fun while doing it. That's what matters.
To andretimpa: Seems like you were the busiest of any of us. What you did put in was solid, and it was nice to work with you. Keep up your cool stuff in Brawl!
To Sera: College sucks, and I'm thankful you were able to devote enough time to still chill with us despite the workload. If you can find the time, keep on visiting us on the forums!
To RapidStar_: You've improved! You stepped it up this time around, and I'm happy to be able to see your progress through these two Wars. I think with a bit more event participation, we can see some great things coming from you.
To Zawadx: If this team has a lieutenant, then it's Zawadx. You contributed a lot of structure to the team, from vault analysis to deckbuilding to mindgating predictions-- despite your responsibilities elsewhere. You were always available to give a second opinion, and I'm sure that we may not have progressed as far as we did without you prodding us to actually go do some testing. It was nice to work with you!
To WMs: Thanks for hosting! We've had... a lot of drama. That's an understatement. But you've been able to handle it with cool and poise in a way that not a lot of people would be able to, and you have my respect for that. I will say that the earlier ECs could've been a smidge more impactful, and that I strongly disagree with what happened in the serprex matter, but on the whole you've done a good job. Keep that up as War wraps up!
To Darkness elementals: Fifth wasn't where we wanted to end up, and I'm sorry for disappointing you there. We gave it our all (kinda), and this is what we got. Want us to do better? Enter the 11th Trials! Show your mettle there, and take the reins yourself.
:earthbig
WAR TEAM 10# :earthbig
So in trials I promised top 3# in war if you voted for me. This was the first war with shards for all of us in the team. 4# places us better than all :earth teams before us except for first war where they did 3#, dosen't countMid war we managed to hard counter 2-3 opponents a round which is truly amazing. We did several 4-1 rounds. Even when we faced 4 Generals the same round we didn't lose, instead we beat them all. We was never the team with the biggest vault and still we managed to compete until round 11. I'm very proud of what we have accomplished as a team!
So what took us there? We had a strong and active team. Things worked smoothly. Deck decision was finished 2-4 hours before deadline every time. We did barely have have any penalties. Predictions went really well and Rng was fair.
In the end what made us lose was :air. We didn't have the decks we needed to compete with them and in the end where we meet them more frequently we lost. I feel like we could have done a lot better vs :gravity. The problem was that the decks we wanted vs to use vs them already was locked for :air, our prime opponent. We was 6-0 vs :water in matches until second last round. We managed to 4-1 :time this war. We did ok vs both :darkness and :entropy. :aether which is a hard opponent for :earth went out earlier than usual. So if it wouldn't have been for :air things would have been very different.
Jenkar: I paid 1120 for this player in the auction. Even 3 times that would have been worth it. Jenkarp did pretty much all vault building and did it flawless. He had lots of deck ideas and other thoughts. Not to mention Jenk-names in vault. And we shouldn't talk about activity. Invaluable in war :o
Joey: I always try to build a team of players with different styles and experiences. I didn't know anything about Joey before war except that he is considered a vet and had lots of tasty nymphs. I still I can't believe I paid 50 for him? even 500 would have been cheap, 50 was a steal. He had a ton of deck ideas and thoughts and great knowledge about other teams. So this wildcard turned out to be a bullseye. 8-)
Manaboy: Another player I paid 50 for. I know you didn't have lots of experience in war. In your app you said you was active and online several days a week. You contributed when you were online but I think you could have been online a bit more. All in all you meet my expectations. ;)
Ryli: Another 50 player. You were pretty much a bonus player that we got. You were fairly active and contributed quite a bit. And considering your computer meltdowns and extreme work hours I can't understand how you managed. I also like to thank you for your deck checking and the big save you did round 11#. And you did exceed my expectations ;)
Avengar: You were supposed to be the player who had experience in war with shards, simply since you played in last :earth war team. Instead you cost me 50 points and a big tactical disadvantage in war bidding. If anyone who bidded for me in trials is mad we didn't go top 3#, blame it on this dude. you know I'm joking, it's all a afdas fault for being op :P However I'm glad you was honest and said you wouldn't be able to play, instead of just disappearing. :-X
Once again thank you team. I hope you learnt to love earth as much as I do. And thank you warmasters. And thank you all worthy opponents. And thank you Rng.
:waterbig :waterbig RIP :waterbig :waterbig
Predictions, discounting those from Team Water members:
| Predicted Position | Number of Predictions |
| #1 | 0 |
| #2 | 0 |
| #3 (Actual Finish) | 0 |
| #4 | 0 |
| #5 | 0 |
| #6 | 0 |
| #7 | II |
| #8 | I |
| #9-12 | IIIIIIIII |
I think it is fair to say we defied expectation.
The Team
Manuel: 30 Auction Points. Excellent newer player, who became more and more valuable as round went on, with a lot of early to mid war testing. He often took a deck I hadn't even considered to test, and got surprising results. Unfortunately burnt out, the impact of RNG taking its toll not just in war, but in PvP in general. I hope we see his return at some point, because he was a good, hard working player, and a steal at a low auction price.
Spielkind: 50 Auction Points. How the hell did I get Spiel, one of the most veteran players on the forum, especially with water, so cheap?! Early War RL had him busy, so had limited impact on vault building, but by late war his activity was invaluable. Always ready to discuss options, call me on my mistakes, and THREE TIMES spotted wrong mark vault errors. Had a perfect balance of supporting my decisions, but questioning them, and an excellent player. He even had 2 water marks by the end of war! So bloody cheap in auction!
RavingRabbid: 500 Auction Points. This war would not have been the same without RR. Hilarious in team chat at the start of War, always giving astute deck predictions, and giving me ideas for decks and builds. A steal for another water master with 7 marks, and so much value for team dynamic. I really hope you stick around and play next war too. His imput in vaultbuilding when I was feeding back on past war water decks was brilliant, and helped me make some hard decisions. Would buy again.
Ginyu: 1099 Auction Points. Oh my god. Vaultbuilding was magical. His activity in this crucial part of War was invaluable. This was his most active time, and we did SO much testing. We worked through all teams and examined possible counter decks, and unexpected decks. Most were my ideas, but I would never have got close to coming up with those ideas without talking and testing at length with this priceless player. Somehow his way of talking things through pokes my brain in just the right places to come up with things. Most of our innovative decks came out of a conversation with him. Activity dropped off due to real life Maths workload, but he still always made sure to reply and be just active enough to be a help still. Also brilliant to talk to on teamspeak. Really, really hope to work with you again mate, good luck with your course :)
JonathanCrazyJ: I loved this war. I loved that we were always the underdog in basically every match from round 5 onwards, and yet we survived, taking some pretty big scalps along the way. I put in a huge amount of effort, and I'm really prod of some of our decks. I'm also proud of my team-building and morale keeping. I am also proud to achieve Water's best ever War result, and a place on the Second Tier of next War's Roster.
I also want to thank WMs. Thoroughly under appreciated job, and yet you rose above the early war drama to keep doing your job on time and well.
Now, all that remains is to watch Air and Gravity make War 10's climax unforgettable.
Because the rushing of the river...
Because the stillness of the blue...
Just let you guys know that JCJ understood my post. :P
Maybe this pic is more clearly:
(https://s16.postimg.org/7sup5esyt/image.jpg)
This was Root's "secret message".
[/conspiracy theory off]
Well, while we got brutalized in the end, this was a really good run overall. A decent amount of small things and some big things held us back a little, had some circumstances been different we might even have won. Second place is a pretty good start for me though ;).
Congrats :air on winning!
Hey Fatsos we got your favourite thing: Disappointment!
Our main issue was activity of course, basically we were a 3man team that only worked on Friday-evening-shifts. If we were lucky we had the intel (that was my job and with few exceptions I put that up quite early each round), maybe up to 2 deck ideas and thoughts on up to 2 opponents 6 hours before deadline. So in those 6 hours we had to do everything else, which resulted in some questionable transmutes, disc/salv and occasionaly we even failed at the decks themselves. And of course, we could probably have thought of better decks had we invested more time and our testing was minimal. The latter might have been part of the reason why DBH did as terribly as it did, I remember us thinking "DBH should beat it" for several decks (that we mindgated perfectly, which however beat DBH anyways) without ever actually testing it. I wonder how close to 50% those matchups really were (and against bw fire deck ragepot rather than firebolt was a problem too), I will ofc still insist that most of that was bad rng :P.
Our mindgating was crazy good, it feels like each round with few exceptions we guessed 3 decks correctly, countered a 4th anyways and then lost the other (and some of the mindgates we lost too ->blame rng).
Our vault wasnt perfect, it was overloaded with weapons and shields all the time and we had 2 completely unused decktypes in our original vault (neuroscorps and rage eaters) that should have been actual discardfodder instead.
The team:
My role: I largely did the intel and was usually the first one to make guesses as to what our opponents would field. I even attempted to simulate the other participants vault based on the public information, but only got done with making the tool work halfway through war, at which point we just didn't have the time to make the necessary guesswork in retrospect. Quite often I also made suggestions what decks to pick if my guess is on point and half of the time one of those was picked in the end and I took part in the discussion whether it would work or not. Occasionaly I build decks myself too.
worldwideweb: Thanks for picking me! You did an awesome job! I think you finalized most of our decks and were the most active in discussions (giving most of the valuable input too). Occasionally you just knew intuitively which deck to use and even if I disagreed you didnt let me convince you otherwise and turned out to be right! You are the main reason for Team :gravity 's best performance yet! At some points you felt more like a teammate than a leader, which may or may not be a good thing.
Odii: Working with you was really nice! It was clear that you are a true war veteran, knowing more about war matters than most. Discussion with you was nice and at each point of it I felt like we were making progress (unless it was clearly just smalltalk which is nice too). Also you occasional came up with awesome hardcounters to some opponents that worked out perfectly :)
I had fun with both of you :)
You have reached the end
majofa: Being the only one in a different timezone, as well as some early issues put you off a lot I guess, still I was expecting a bit more given your war history. You'd usually appear for about half an hour each deckbuilding phase right before deadline. I'm sorry, but I don't recall you giving any input that affected our decisions or that we should regret not having taken to heart. You didnt use the possibility of asynchronus communication of Tpad much either and often we had no idea about your whereabouts.
Naesala: Welp, nothing wrong here, she said she wouldnt be online right off the bat and so it was ;D. I suppose www3 wanted to include his Hotyugh, complete card collection makes things easy and he didn't want to kick her either. Congrats Nae on being part of the best Team :gravity yet :P!
So many cards giving us a headache in combination. The most annoying ones were SW, Wings, OE and damsels, steals and vagger were really bad for us too.
The only counters we had to wings were chargers (get outrushed on their own, rt splash not good enough vs Vagger+damsel), SoFo (get rekt by SW and often OE), catatitandials and pulvy (loses to PC unless against a stall) and poison (BW weak to damsels). The last rounds went as follows:
1.Gather our scraps in vault
2. Built the best counter to darkdom, CCUGnymphs and grabbow we can
???
3. Lose to darkdom, CCUGnymphs and grabbow