Fog of WAR

I had the best night of game-play of my entire WAR career last night. Far and beyond what it normally was, but close to a few nights back in Kadrin Valley, and yesterday was a Monday of all days.

eamed by them. As hot as that sounds, it wasn’t so much fun. After not too long I had to log for dinner, and some house chores, happy that I was able to get a good 30 minutes to an It all started with a flight to Reikland. Destruction have pushed their way into Reikland and Kadrin Valley, and have been stuck there for a week or so. Last night when I got on, the majority of my guild was in KV doing their thing. I didn’t particularly want to run around with them, doing the keep/BO routine, I wanted blood. I wanted to leave a trail of corpses riddle with arrows in my wake. I was thirsty for the dead bodies of my enemies. So, I ran out of the Warcamp solo, and found some people having a skirmish standoff with Destruction between the camp, and Wilhelm’s Fist. The fighting was pretty intense, we were outnumbered (I think I never could get a group invite), and there was a lot of back and forth. The witch elves of our server seem to be looking out for me more frequently, as I was consistently getting double and triple-thour of good fighting going on. After I got things settled around the house, I sank back into my chair to round out the evening with whatever activity was bustling. I walked right into a crazy storm of the most intense warfare I have ever experience in WAR. Reikland was alive with about 3-4 warbands from each side, running across the zone, making feints on keeps, ninja’ing BOs, and clashes everywhere in between as armies collided. I had more fights in random terrain locations that were not in the radius of an objective in that one night that I have before in all the other zones combined. Some of the best fights were the tail ends of one army getting bum-rushed by the advance scouts of the other, or when the two forces are closing in on one location from different angles and the vectors intersected. Chaos and blood ensued.

The absolute highlight of the night that epitomized the entire evening’s fun was a fight south and east of Frostbeard’s BO in the northern portion of the map. There is this steep crest that runs north and east that divides off two paths to the objective. We were taking a winding route to try and see if any Destruction was headed there at the same time and to try to catch any stragglers. At first we thought we had an all clear, but then the call came out that, yes, there was one or two, wait, 5, hold on… 12, oh shit, it’s an entire warband. We first met the deadly daggers of those wicked Witch Elves. Our backs were to a steep cliff that we couldn’t climb up, and it would have been easy to just give up and accept defeat, but we don’t roll that way. We fought, and held ground while the trailers of our forces caught up. First one WE dropped, then another. Soon the tanks started to show up, and the healers, and everything went to pot.

I have never been in life-or-death combat in my lifetime, but I’ve heard references to the “fog of war”, and anyone who has played an RTS knows the phrase, but I got a virtual taste of it last night.  Myself, and a small group of other players got entangled in a fight with a contingent of the enemy. My play-style as a Skirmish Shadow Warrior, is extremely mobile. I’m always on the move, trying to strafe, and get to the back of my enemy. Melee players also are typical more mobile as well, they don’t need to sit still and wait for cast times, and when they run up against someone who literally runs circles around them, it leads to an interesting dance. Well, the enemy I was facing was good, but in the end, we were victorious, I looked around, wondered where I was, and saw that I had moved significantly south of the main force. I turned north and had an amazing realization of just how far that fight had taken me without me ever truly realizing the distance, and I bet my opponent hadn’t either. It was an incredible evening, and that moment encapsulated the feeling of the whole evening for me, and reinforced just how amazing this game can be.