“Don't you recognise all your most admirable qualities in us? Oh yes... we are genocidal monsters! Just like you!” -- Queen Myrrah

After the Locust Horde's disastrous defeat at the hands of Omega, the Horde was in need of a morale boost. Anyone who has looked at the global news at some point within the past two weeks would have noticed that Alliance 44 Rookies appears to be everyone's whipping boy. Indeed, Omega thrashed them twice and the Rookies' war with Misfits of Old came to a truce quickly.

Naturally, we noticed that Rookies was in the awkward position where most of their tribes were too small to do anything (2500 acres or less) to the top half of our alliance, but the presence of a single 7000 acre spirit nonetheless put them in our war declare range.

The Horde's scouts observed said spirit over the course of 2 days or so, closely watching his movements, wondering how Spirit tribes even use the bathroom, and scratching our heads collectively wondering how one might even kill a ghost. For Locust are good at killing ground-dwellers, but could 3 or 4 3500 acre tribes even deal with such a behemoth?

Nonetheless, we made the decision to press onward with the attack, especially once we noticed that the expected long war between Rookies and Misfits was abortive and that the spirit had converted back into growth mode. The plan was to explore to more than half his size (for maximum op success), convert to warmode, declare, and quickly execute the kill before the Rookies knew what hit them.

Of course, things didn't exactly go according to the plan. An unnamed nazgul in alliance 41 repeatedly grabbed our key player in the mission, Queen Myrrah, down to where she was less than half the size of the 7000 acre spirit! Worse, she wouldn't even have full mp by the planned killtime! Nonetheless, I made the decision to carry on our assault despite the setback, and we noted down the nazgul in 41 to deal with later.

The plan was to declare at 19:50 servertime and end the war within 5 minutes. However, at around 17:55 we noticed that the spirit in question had handed us a gift -- he had sent out a huge explore, AND all of his thieves! I decided to move forward the declare schedule to 18:50 so that we could execute our assault whilst the spirit's thieves were still out and his citizens still devastated from his explore.

We were worried because we noticed the said spirit was quite active around the time we were planning to declare, and our Locust scouts previously in their confusion at dealing with foes incorporeal attempted to poke at the shades of The Spirit of Beer's tribe, were noticed, and promptly executed :S

Nonetheless, we marched onward. We declared war at 18:58 on Rookies, bellowing that if everyone could kick around Rookies then we might as well, too!

Our smallest tribe participating in the assault, a lowly 1600 acre light elf Lambent Leviathan (who was coincidentally our casualty in the war with Omega) pulled off clutch magical voids, getting rid of Elendian AND seal of deflection on the 7000 acre target. Our Brittonian Nemacyst used his seeders to keep track of the enemy's movements admirably, providing intel just when we needed it while jamming those pesky humans' communications. The rest of our target's homes, academies, guilds, and nonexistent farms disappeared in a flurry of Dragonmages, and the war was over within 2 minutes, 1-0 to the Locust Horde.

As grand commander of the Locust Horde, I was very proud of the level of coordination that the Horde was able to muster together. We had come a long way since our desperate struggle with Coming Soon when our largest tribe was 1500 acres. However, as we are still totally outmatched and outclassed by Omega, let alone KP and Countdown, we still have a long way to go yet. We'll get there.

General RAAM signing off.