Ok Moe made me feel jealous i l try to write more words than him.
I was out of BD for 5 years then my nightmare starts - a message appear at the phone from @Ravege , “Hi Crusnik , wanted to inform you BD championship starts , would be great to see you there, plant Madagascar if you want.”
Initially i meeehed hard and said nope no bd for me. Two more days passed and said what the hell lets plant , Covid pandemic started … lets see who of my friends might play the game , so i plant with my name in a try to see who remembers me and downloading skype once more. Almost immediately i see that i m the same teams with Pantera that i played several times in the past , i m trying to get an invite into HINI while Kosta and Pantera asking about my identity and challenging me that i m not the real Crusnik as Kosta supposedly played with the real Crus before 5 months.
Ended up joining HINI and spamming them how the teams will be ( roster wise ) and what will be our goal , from start HINI didnt really had a clear goal. Somehow the roster is filled with ppl here and there. Before we were ready to settle , ANGL sent their sub to attack us and sometime after that SAIL fam also moved in ( sent by Kael so he can take us on his side ). Initially the chain of command supposedly was to be Pantera as leader , Yozius as the right hand , Lobo Kosta Muri and myself supposedly were to coordinate, more ppl joined and the command changed entirelly , Gaurav joined the 2 above , then Kenny comes in another team is formed - Gaurav , Yozius ragequit , Morgan kind of afk playing . HINI internal wasnt a better situation than HINI external.
IND and SHIP joined the coalition , SHIP as a bro and not as a sub ( that was known from the start ). Supposedly we were getting more and more teams to our side , whenever i asked about our diplo the answers were laconic , so at this point Mode were with us , Psi was with us ( i argued about Asia plans to win but several head figures told me its ok they are on our side ) - the timeline is around the attack on YVN. So in a theoritical aspect at that point the whole world was with us aside ODM , SA and NA. Whenever i tried to touch the diplo and see where we are going i had reassuring answers and that i dont have to do anything ( i was particularly worried about WAR and Pepe later ).
From the start HINI activity to my understanding was a huge problem especially after ToS war , i could have fun till the ODM war - then the armies got stacked to protect the less active members , Timotheus , Lobo and Link were the consistent active ones that was easy to communicate with ( reachable ) , Muri was doing his best till he couldnt play anymore cause of irl stuff and his newborn child as we all know. From that point till the Asia war i would gather wreckages and farm r5s since diplo was a mess and while HINI had the hints decided ultimately to trust Excel - cause some of our leaders were friends with him and negate the voices that were talking about incoming attack from Asia side which led to our Exile into AA continent.
Around tick 1200 , after the forced exile to AA i asked for a way out - either HINI let me go to ZEUS or they let me go to IND - both requests were rejected and only because of Pantera mainly decided to stay and dont gg out of the game since i didnt want to leave the team without the ok of the leader. Without having any other solution i forced my way into diplo to see if what ppl mentioned to me ( leaders mainly ) was true - what i found out was a complete mess - WAR wasnt with us cause we didnt respect them , PePe disliked us cause we didnt respect them , Valu disliked us cause we didnt respect them etc etc. While things with WAR eventually did go better , PePe was a no go. After a point HINI life was getting really hard for me and tbh if i didnt die cause of a missplay ( that i still believe wasnt on me - at least entirelly ) i would probably still be with them as i didnt want to force my way out.
Now on the tactical view - most major strategies that happened were weird and in my understanding i would describe them as blunders. ANGL and WOOF flying out of Africa because they trusted HINI to guard their back and essentially be their vanguard. There was an easy play to lock them into AA by attacking their thin gating channel which we never did for whatever reasons that i never understood ( i suppose the thirst to kill Milan was so big to blind the easy plays ). At the same time NA coalition instead of invading Eu/Asia immediately decided to stay and look how this war will go ( supposedly because they feared a possible SA invasion ).
The next blunder was the payment to Asia from HINI which we didnt know about ( at least i ) and found out later - i was totally against it since i knew that Asia would go for the win as that was their goal from start to end. It was clear as the sky that Asia expected HINI to crash on ODM and when it didnt happen the Asia hit was to be expected , althought i do agree with Moe that it wasnt a smart move since they got themselves into a deadlock ( ultimately they lost any chance for a victory as the initial coalition ). Whatever ppl may say HINI was in complete disarray when Asia hit them althought they had all the info necessary.
Some time passed and the Asia war started - Valu was the key and they were supposed to be part , they changed 2 times their mind and eventually they did assist HINI to land on Asia , with the cooperation of AT from SA and BYZ from Africa - the invade started and it was rumoured NA would join as well, PePe launched as well and practically that was the last time PePe cooperated with HINI since HINI “orders” forced them to stay and look at the sky to secure any stab wont happen. Relations with PePe from that point were broken. At that point and with Pantera absence i started doing diplo more actively , tried to repair and relations with PePe , Valu several times, to the end of the war i had talks with Sir.Skip and while everyone in HINI said he will stab i still believe he would keep his war. We were really close to a deal but the deal was broken down mainly cause HINI and SHIP wanted Angelwings dead - at the end and while we could close the deal Sir.Skip made a deal with AT and instead of killing the inactives with the agreement of Sir.Skip we ended leaving all members of WOOF alive and we were supposed to handle the relic to AT since they recruited WOOF to their team. That being said HINI were lucky at that point cause AM decided to run instead of assisting BD2 who were fighting fiercely for the whole war. Trigger Finger battle prowess and BD2 in general is something i admired and made me like them a lot. While everyone accuse Iceman to be a multi and a stabber ( which i cant confirm or deny as i dont know him ) i have to say BD2 stayed true to their words and never stabbed their allies but in reality they got stabbed several times ( aside the situation with Valu i suppose - which isnt on me to know their relations ).
With the Asia war comign to an end and aside the relic take over , once more HINI didnt end up killing any army meaningfull , AM and BD2 were alive , a lot of diplo happened , teams changed sides again and again which led to a world war with everyone fighting but not clear sides. At0m flyd and At1m were fighting with HINI / BYZ and later on SHIP and Mode , AT and WOOF did a blitz and were fighting with Mode which led to Mode and Sith pull back , diplo talks happened that once more HINI pulled “the how we can trust you?” magic question with BD2 - that was the last negotiation i was in as i ragequit of the dumb way of HINI diplo at that point.
The war with Atom progressed and HINI started pushing them back slowly. I have to say that almost the entire round till 2.9k tick i was online mostly 20/24hrs per day. So at the last day with HINI i was with 3 hrs sleep when they contacted me to reinforce Lobo - with no more info. I wake up and found Lobo locked up somehow and was asked to reinforce him , leaders and coordinators werent around to give a clear line of how we l play this out , ppl argued that the op was safe or the op was unsafe , sp was added , i informed that the op is super old but we werent supposed to let lobo die - So they said they will refresh eot ( which wouldnt be necessary if i had to pull anyway ) since you can do a blind pull at 10 sec and dodge any tricky situation. Ended up landing , i was relocked and at that time i disbanded everything adn said gg - Wp to Neutron on this one. Through the round i inquired several times for roster swaps and screamed about our activity. It made my desicion to leave hini 100% when ppl after i died came and said we will be active now in a try to keep me in the team which ultimately led to the other end. Also was furious that they decided to call me instead of 2 armies ( EU time ) that werent moving throught the night.
So i had genuinely decide to quit as i couldnt see any way winning and felt defeated since i lost my army in such a dumb way. Tabula tried to persuade me several times throught the round and never stopped trying so i informed him if HINI say ok i can join him which after 2 days led to me joining the ZEUS teams as i didnt want to rejoin HINI anyway ( i had already understood it wasnt a place for me to be and couldnt forget the way i died as i felt the team let me down ).
About ZEUS and Neutron and the events that unfolded the last day , i contacted both Tabula and Neutron and i believe they both had all the winning cards to their hands but for whatever reasons they decided to stay idle , part ways and dont secure a victory they could take anyway aside if they deserved it. ZEUS and AtOM could guard the attack on relic 10 but for whatever reasons they decided to stay idle and let AGE land on relic 10 - Both leaders till the very end were against merging without their own rules - which led to a shaky deal and Neutron decided early to tick 4000 to join AGE althought he was warned he will be kicked. ZEUS as well althought they could try to make ARES relaunch to relic 10 - they didnt even wanna try and even the main army instead of attacking the ATOM relics ( especially relic 10 ) they decided to stay idle and w8 the pepe attack - So many blunders and the win was still in their hands but Neutron preferred to join AGE since Soul Eater supposedly was bribed from HINI.
The strange thing that was happening as i was playing with HINI was that i was getting more and more friends in supposedly enemy coalitions - mainly Asia , had the chance to meet Nopy , Bilal , Unity , Excel , yaz and at that point if i didnt have the loyalty syndrom i would be glad to join them but didnt really want to gather hate from my team. Youssef and Energy were 2 other guys taht i like a lot and was always easy to communicate with about anything. With SHIP roster we had our good moments and our bad moments - I liked Nick , Moe and most of the SHIP guys. I would really liked to have the chance to play with Kenny , Harvester , Niracas , LizardEye , Snake and the rest of IND guys but i got denied access because i had to be in HINI. I cant say i have any good feeling about NA teams - in reality Neutron was a puppeteer aside Dzina who really played - for the rest of NA i cant say much - dying again and again eta 4 - 5 ( Sandstorm / Sandwitch ) - afking and dying. Props to Neutron for managing 3 teams that most of them played as bots the whole round. AT while i never was really close with managed to survive and ultimately lock 2 spots into the winning team when Milan banned twice. SGC while being inactive for 1k ticks also managed to hold spots into the winning team and Psi as well made it. If i forget anyone that should be in this post sorry. As i said earlier BD2 while they were accused for being stabbers they were probably the most faithfull guys to their allies.
EDIT - I was sad that Milan had to go out in such a way - i still believe he is one of the best in this game / activity - micromanaging and wartime at the same time.
Almost forgot to give props to the winning team - which for me isnt all the teams that merged that wont the era. One team won and it is AGE but that happened because of multiple teams working out with diplomacy so wp from the teams that made AGE happen. GG