This feels like a really long era.. it might be becuase of all the long nights, all the diplomatic issues or simply because it's my first time leading an alliance really serious; but now it's over.

I figured I'd make a topic to say a little about how the era was to me, and say thank you and sorry to some people.

The era were as you will know the schoolyard era, and so teams were picked. Just as with basically every other team who signed up, we had some problem with making all join up, and we were lacking 3 members if I'm not wrong when we were at the first of September. So we were not as badly hurt as xVx, but I think not as well planned as KILT. But we managed to lure 2 people to join us, and picked up one random from the map.

The era started well, us and LAMP had a NAP uintill we were the last ones left (If I'm not mistaken.. I really should know these things) because of the treath we guessed Kenny and Denny would pose, expecting them to gang up on us. The fear didn't grow weaker when we saw Kenny expand into xVx teritory. But Denny were missing, and we later heard they were RU, but only very few of the members.

The era went on, our first "real" war that started with KILT. LAMP had signed a NAP with them for some hundred ticks, so we knew we'd stand alone. The whole thing started with Kenny asking for a NAP till tick 1000 with them having top left to themself, us having top right. This was while we had expanded well into the middle having pretty good control there while he had focusing on taking xVx territory. It was not a deal I was very interested in, which I said, but agreed to discuss it the day after. Then they started moving spams to next to my gates/radars, and giving me different explonations why, so I figured I'd strike before stricken with no deal set with them. It started well when fighting their inf with our tanks.. but then they came back with explosive vehicles.. alsmost only explosive vehicles! We got pushed back slowly, and were close to the desperate tactic of attacking, losing our armies so we could re-build infantry. We were gathering on an outpost near them when we were lucky and kenny attacked us first, leaving 1-2 armies on the op from members who weren't online, leading us to win the battle instead of losing it if we would have attacked, and with the chassis change, we held the chassis advantage isntead of them, and we pushed them back, in the end conquering them.

While this was going to an end, the NAP we had with xVx till tick 500 were running out, and they wouldn't give us an answer if they wanted to extend it, and CPM (Previously RU) were beating/had beaten LAMP. We turned to them to get a NAP. These discussions took AGES, many many days, and we still managed to have confusion. I though it lasted till tick 650 unless the terms of the till tick 1000 NAP were finished, which they still hadn't at tick 640, while CPM thought we had agreed upon tick 1000. CPM and OC were waring FTW, where we rushed in and took the relics.

The xVx war might have been the shortest one in BD history, I think it lasted 1-2 ticks from we attacked till the leader had kicked out all the members. We rushed down, but CPM hit a relic 1 tick before us. But, as I told their member, I would still take them after launching before.

CPM heard I were planning to possibly attacking them tick 650, got pissed, and tried to twist words in previous NAP (In my opinion) to make it last till tick 750, I said either accept that it's over tick 650, or tick 1000, they could decide. They chose 1000. We tried to take up the territory discussions the day after, but steve were sick (or something like that?), and Denny were away, so no more discussions.. the day after we also tried talking to Steve, but no answer from him for a full day. Not about the deal, nor firemanpete having a trainingbase so close to our colonies, and so Ourania nuked it to get rid of it. Then Denny tried to purposefully kill the squad of one of my members on a conquer, admitting it.. still not turning. My member attacked his orgin as a threath to get him to turn. Denny defended. I got told that we should attack now becuase they tried to attack his squad, and because they would probably attack us.

I guess I'm to naive, and think to many have the same set of honor that I have, not to backstab allies. But a couple hours we saw gates get jammed, slowly. Gave me time to call people online. The ywere jammign our whole netowrk, and tried to take it. Luckily, we defended quite well, and started pushing them back in the first day of the war, everything went amazing!
Then the second day came.. the first day we had 1 who couldn't get on becuase the power where he lived had died, second day, 2-3 more people couldn't get online, that day we lost 4-5 armies. Some to locks, some becuase the people couldn't get on even if they wanted. The tables had turned.. CPM were pushing. We went up against what I think were their largest armies after locking it down, 2-3 of us, mixed chassis as we had a newly joined member.. we ended up losing, and so we were even weaker. We had already planned to give up the west side, but now it was escaladed and we razed it as quick as we could. OC were figthing MoDE at this time, MoDE were winning. But it was still CPM vs BME alone.

We never fully recovered from the losses of that many armies. felt like we always needed 3 peopel to face one of CPM, slowly getting pushed back. And with them having the west continent, we didn't have the incomme advantage, or at least not as strongly. The war looked like we were losing, then I got the news that CPMhad said something that MoDE had broken the deal when it came to the relics, and so they conciderd helping us. And they did, right after we had an incredibly close battle with CPM which killed tons of armies on both sides.

With mode pushing in the west continent and us holding middle, MoDe were slowly giving up ground; as we rebuilt, we started pushing middle, and making nukes within range of their colones. Many nukes were sent there, killing both units and workers before CPM rleocated to top west.

MoDE, TS, BME (and towards the end, TK) pushed them out of the eastern and middle continents, leaving them only with the two west continents. BNE, BME, TS and TK were pushing against CPM, MPC, MPC1 and KILT while MoDE were fighting FF, a war they went fairly well. And so CPM were one allie down.

When MoDE re-joined the frontlines, CPM basically gave up and decided that their mission were to turn MoDE against us (if I'm not wrong?), a couple of them relocated onto outposts MoDE were spamming so MoDE would conquer them. CPM died, MPC actualy survived longer, but also they ended up dying. Now FTW had 1 relic, MoDe had 3, BME had 6. And our allies handed the relics to us.

All went well uintill the last few ticks when Toma and Terminator Q from MoDE attacked my member Malice with 71 squads. I first had 200 squad delayed to defend to hit when shield ran out.. then decided not to kill them, rather had my member relocate, leaving toma on a locked down op, and terminator Q only turning after seeing that he was now only attacking an outpost, both of them planning to kill one of my members.. a little sad, but not MoDE's fault, they've been great allies, which leads me to my thank you list!

Thank you MoDE, you guys REALLY helped us in the CPM war, I don't think we would have won without you on our side, you've been good allies since KILT attakced you guys early era and you guys killed 10 squads before the war started!

Thank you TS, I know you had many inactive members, but the active ones did GREAT work, like killing Jame's army.

BNE, TK, I didn't see you guys the most because BNE were fighting up north and TK went down south while we were pushing middle, but what I saw were good.

Thank you to the rest of our allies for not backstabbing us, with that many alliances in our hive I'm suprised that other than the last day, no one backstabbed us.

And last but not least, thank you to all my wonderful team mates. I think I've felt every emotion possible for the team, everythng from love to ate. Not all of you could finish with me, but still thank you Mitchell, Michael and Matt. The ones who were with me from the beginning, I'm suprised you ahev endured it! All those late night calls, all my yelling and all my terrible strategies! To those who joined late, Josh and Yoz, you both are great parts of why we won this, bringing great experience and activity to the team.

And so my sorry list
Sorry CPMfor not finishing 1 vs 1, it is likely that you would have won if it was 1 vs 1. To my defense, I don't think you guys ever agreed to it, probably planning to use OC if needed.

Sorry to Kenny.. I said many mean things in an attempt to make you do rushed, stupid actions in the war with KILT. Not sure if it worked or not.. but I should probably not have said it anyway, it was dirty play from my side.

Sorry Matt, I kicked you without talking to you first. I waited around 24 hours plannign to talk to you, but it seems like you were online on skype only the two hours I slept that night, and we were in a positon where the player change was needed.

Sorry to Kevin. I said you could join, and believe me, that was my intention, we had a member who wanted to leave, but he kept playing in a way that we needed him and his army. I'm sorry that I couldn't play this era with you.


TL;DR thank you all for this great era, and my first ever win as a leader!

Very detailed and I like it honestly, it was a well deserved win for you guys regardless of how bad the planning for the semi-event was to be. In the end the game is about winning and you did just that, congrats!

Yh, good one Simen

Well won era, was fun playing along side you.

T.

I can never forgive you for kicking my inactive arse out! NEVER!!!!

Okay, I forgive you.

Fun era for the most part, good job Simen.

oh it was greatest era surely funny too, ell much emotions
matt u lazy

It was a pleasure playing with BME. I said it in the schoolyard chat, but I'll say it again. Special thanks to Sims and Rania, who ended up calling me nearly as much as kitty everyday. Without your calls and texts throughout the day though, I'm sure I would have died a million times over. I didn't get to play the entire round with you guys, and the circumstances for which I joined weren't the best, but I'm still glad I did. Played with a lot of players I'm not used to this round in general. Some were huge disappointments while other's were even better than my expectations.

And I'd like to give a little more insight about the 1st 500 ticks from a different side as I was originally xVx.

The era unfortunately started with only 5 members showing up for xVx. Kitty and I both showed up 1 day late because I was in AZ visiting her and I didn't get home until very late on Sunday night the day the era started. To my surprise, I came on to see only 5 members in xVx even 1 full day after the era started (not including myself). One of the members had even placed on the map, but did not ever log in to accept the invite (Woona). At this point, Kenny gave Kitty permission to fill the gaps in our roster however we needed and also gave us an unofficial NAP until we gained all 12 members. We quickly rose up in the ranks and became 4th place even with only 9 members in our alliance. At first, it seemed that xVx might actually pull through even though we had such a late start. This is when the issues started to happen. Unfortunately, because we had pulled so many randoms, a lot of distrust and arguments began to occur internally with how the alliance should be run and what our next steps should be. Kitty unfortunately, did not have a computer at this time and was playing solely on her cell phone, making it difficult to monitor BD and to be the most effective leader. She put a lot of reliance on our members to self-govern themselves and to make what she thought were the 'right' decisions. As I said before, this caused issues because we had too many differences on what the 'right' play style was.

Kitty relied on me heavily for advice as she is a newer leader with less experience. My play style is very defensive and so my advice to Kitty would be to play defensively as well as diplomatically. Many of the members did not agree with this being our best move (and none of them knew that many of the decisions were mine). We had a lot of very aggressive players who wanted to attack just about everything on the map. Kitty had already made NAPS with all of the showdown alliances at this point. LAMP was until tick 500 (I believe), BME tick 500, and KILT until the relics came out (which then changed to tick 1000 when the relics came out super early). xVx originally went after Def to expand our territory. Shadowcat and Hunter proved to be very active and gave us a lot of trouble. After a big battle with them, I decided to try bringing both of them into our alliance to replace a member who was banned and another who was inactive. Many of the xVx members disagreed with this move and it caused a LOT of inner strife among the xVx members (again). After we brought in our new members, FTW moved in to take Def out, which our 2 new members were highly opposed to. This then lead us to start planning to go to war with FTW, which then turned into an alliance when we both found we had a mutual ally (KILT) and a mutual potential enemy (LAMP). xVx had planned to go after LAMP as soon as tick 500 hit. To our unfortunate circumstances, LAMP disbanded after the CPM war. This then left us with only 1 more big alliance to war (BME). xVx's members were extremely angry at this point because we had not warred a single big alliance yet. Simen (as he said) asked us to extend the NAP. Kitty was very hesitant because of the fact that she knew all of our members were itching to fight anyone at this point (many threatened to leave due to boredom). At this point, Kitty decided to not extend the NAP. However, due to the boredom, people had become inactive and all plans set up to start the war with BME never came into fruition. This caused more fights and members started to leave. Then came the shortest war in BD history, as simen put it. Shadowcat had left us to join BME, Slinky had left to join OC, Hunter was booted because we had assumed he was going to join Shadowcat in BME (which wasn't the case), Flux announced he was going to leave to join OC, seaweed and Make it wit chu announced they no longer cared, and Marix (right before kitty disbanded xVx) stated he was going to OC as well. And here ends the mess that was xVx.

I woke up to a very unpleasant surprise of not being in an alliance and BME attacking me (as well as dozen's of skype messages asking what happened). I responded against BME by myself and nuked a few of their armies, giving up any regard for my relic and focusing on killing what I could. At this point, I had received an invite from just about every alliance on the map as I was still ranked within the top 5 as well.
After considering many options, I eventually decided to join BME (partially feeling bad that I had crippled some of their army, as well as partially proud that I had crippled some of their army ).

From here, you can pretty much just follow sim's explanation of how the round went

Full props to CPM, you had us in a 1v1; I have no doubt about it. We were simply lucky to have good allies. It's unfortunate that we had to pull in help, but BD is a game of diplomacy as much as it is war. I usually do not like battlehugs where an alliance willingly gives up their relics, but I also was not willing to put much more time into BD as I was being woken up multiple times every night while working a full time job, and adjusting to some new life changes as well. Not the best of excuses, but I'm tired and want my sleep!

No problem Simen.