Oops i was supposed to post this, haha:

“For a time, the humans of Sera knew the illusion of peace... until Emergence Day. At that moment, our people broke free from our subterranean, erupting into the domain of these ground walkers, and wiping out whole cities. We fought and killed the humans on their fine boulevards, in their homes, on their battlefields. And they fought back. In time, their valiant defense was crushed.” -- Locust Queen Myrrah explaining Emergence Day, the initial invasion of the Locust.

This is how the Locust Horde (#47) had anticipated our first war as a new alliance of a couple experienced players and (some) motivated scrubs would go.

As is often the case, however, reality intervenes with unintended consequences, and the death and devastation we envisaged was not wholly what we had hoped. But we survived, to fight on another day. This is our victory.

Our alliance had just acquired some new talent and we were still in growth mode and getting our tribes running up to full speed in the day or so before Coming Soon (an alliance which appears to be composed of some experienced Orkfia veterans as well as some veterans who could use some brushing up on the nuances of Alliances at War) declared war on us at 2011-12-17 01:57:56.

Coming Soon drew first blood, with their attackers launching an initial, devastating assault before the tick on our very own [Captain] Hammerwing, throwing his forces into disarray and sending him careening, howling, back into the Hollow less some 265 acres, about a third of his size at the time!

Initial reconnaissance reports indicated (as was expected) that Coming Soon had already converted into warmode, and that particularly frighteningly their rept hai has no offense and was indubitably a thief / mage while their eagle was looming ominously over the battlegrounds of Sera at some 2400 acres bristling with guilds and a large contingent of thieves.

Nevertheless, I made the decision, being the only tribe in the Horde within their effective t/m casting range to opt for a full loadout of guilds rather than getting some churches in my initial conversion to warmode. I would later have reason to regret this decision, though I did what I could to avert my demise. But more on that later!

I arrived back at my command center after some urgent business at a holiday party to see that our Hammerwing in his grief had already launched an ill-considered and failed counterattack on the 800 acre Oleg Hai.

However, the next three attacks all hit home, with our rept hai “borrowing” 100 acres from the Oleg Hai, which were promptly taken back by their nazgul (NB: The nazgul 2-hour attack time was showing its worth here, though our Horde is in agreement that we much prefer the 13/13 wraiths of old and that the character of the Nazgul race has been destroyed with the changes. But balance is a holy thing, indeed). Additionally, Hammerwing got his act together and his warriors' cries for vengeance were answered as he successfully razed 20+ homes, accompanied by myself razing some 14 homes from our kill target, the Oleg Hai elder of Coming Soon.

Fast forward to 7:00. By this time, I had been taking grievous t/m attacks by Coming Soon's eagle and rept hai and had converted to 15% churches. We will soon see that this was not enough. I launched an attack on their landfat nazgul and prepared to release some sages right after the tick in order to survive, but a last minute raze by the nazgul which took out 30+ of my homes took me by surprise, and I didn't raze enough sages. General RAAM (“Damn they caught me with my pants down I hadn't recovered citizens fast enough after converting to warmode”) was slain by Delta Squad at 8:00. 0-1 to Coming Soon.

The Horde mourned his loss, and though in despair that the Oleg Hai in Coming Soon had rebuilt all the homes we had destroyed in our initial counterattack, we planned, now fully converted into warmode with massive amounts of guilds up by everyone who could manage them, to definitively launch an all-out thief/mage assault on the elder at 16:59, with the Kill Attempt occurring immediately after the tick.

The initial devastation dropped their elder down to about 6k citizens. We were paranoid that their elder would log in and release military before our next kill attempt the update afterward, but this didn't occur. After some more home destruction by our rept hai, owl, and dark elf, Coming Soon's elder joined RAAM in the grave shortly after 18:00. The Horde gets its revenge, and the score was 1-1. With some 600+ acres gained needed for us to win and some 190 acres lost needed for us to lose, another 130+ acre grab by the nazgul left us feeling the heat.

As an aside, a wayward raven attacked into our war, but missed the tick by 2 seconds. With no defense left, we piled on him and killed the raven next tick. Naturally the nazgul in Coming Soon used this opportunity to hit our rept hai who had used up both generals to help kill the offending raven.

Nevertheless, at this point our efforts came to a standstill. With no achievable kill targets, and the nazgul's t/m defenses high and the rept hai and eagle being out of the question, the Horde was left without options for a win. We determined that we could only turtle it out.

Meanwhile however around this time some diplomatic work by my war strategist Skorge and attacker Berserker made a truce appear on the horizon. Naturally I wasn't informed of this (great eldership by me, not even being involved in truce talks) until after we tried a kill attempt on the nazgul which only succeeded in reducing his citizens from 90k to 87k and possibly ruining our chances at a truce.

However, Coming Soon graciously accepted, and the Horde lives on to fight another day.

Excellent report, great read!

Great report. Also good to have some insights of the working of the war-system currently in small alliances. Seems a kill + alot of acre trading can get you close to a victory/defeat already ;)

Good kill on me. Didn't expect the 3rd attempt so fast.

Lol it was a bit of a gamble. the second we saw you guys declare we chose guilds over churches and it cost us our elder. Then we noticed that a little bit after the kill u guys weren't on for a couple updates straight so we assumed you were either sleeping or at work/school/busy so we jumped on it.

I was betting on you guys recharging

If i hadn't reconned you we were actually going to recharge but we thought that we might as well push through :P. But you're nazgul was impossible to hit with Seal + nazgul resistance

Refreshing report, more like this please!