NBK vs SOF - Dec 14 2010

Background

After the NBK vs PANLV war ended NBK began aggresively landgrabbing in an attempt to finish with a decent NW in the short amount of time left in the set. This style of play began to create tension between NBK and SOF and the majority of the landgrabs against SOF were done by small NBK countries against large landfat SOF countries. Over the course of the remainder of the set, tensions continued to rise as both sides were guilt of shady LGing practices such as dropping land after grabs, 2 stepping, and running all jetters. Tensions reached a peak at the very end of the set as a SOF member detagged and killed a NBK country without provocation. The SOF member had half of his countries tagged in LAE and half SOF but he only hit with the previously tagged LAE ones and 1 of the SOF detagged countries. NBK promptly killed all of the SOF member's countries including the countries still tagged SOF that he did not use to attack with. Several SOF leaders were outraged that NBK killed the SOF countries without making contact first and NBK was unapologic as they viewed all of the countries in that string as suiciders and contact was not necessary. SOF began actively recruiting members to war NBK in the following set and gained several members from alliance but still was only roughly half the size of NBK. NBK knew that SOF was looking for a war but seeing that they were not able to gain enough members NBK decided to take a set off from warring and attempt a rare netgaining set. What NBK did not realize at the time was that SOF had become allies with a new clan, DOOM made up of several fromer NBK members and leaders and also NBK's outspoken enemy, Makinso. SOF and DOOM announced a merger which gave them a slight country advantage over NBK on Dec 11th [1].

The War Begins

NBK realized that SOF was now in a position to attack and began keep a close eye on SOF to see what their intentions were. When SOF began stocking oil and keeping turns on hand NBK knew that an attack was immenant and made the decision to strike first even though NBK was not fully war prepped and only had 24hrs of turns stored. On Dec. 14th NBK declared war on SOF [2] and one of the best wars FFA has ever seen began.

The War

First 24hrs

Stat	NBK	SOF
Hits	11,316	11,989
Kills	68	50
HPK	166	240

Christmas Ceasfire

On dec. 23rd both alliances agreed to a 72 hr ceasefire to celebrate the Christmas holiday. Warstats as of the 23rd were:

Stat	NBK	SOF
Hits	65,312	57,370
Kills	313	215
HPK	209	267

War Strategies

Both alliances implemented war strategies that were widely critized but somewhat unorthodox. NBK focused on killing restarts and the most active hitters regardless of NW instead of the traditional top down killing approach. They believed that by forcing SOF to continually restart they would eventually tire and start dropping in total countries. It also allowed NBK to gain a sizable advantage in hits per day while sacrificing NW. SOF used a strategy aimed at crippling NBK's ability to break by killing only original countries and ABing NBK's main breakers. This allowed SOF to gain a large advantage in NW and ANW and outgrow NBK's breakers. They were also able to become nearly unbreakable in spies which was a constant hinderance to NBK throughout the war. Both strategies were very effective and worked exactly as designed.

Stonewalling

Both sides were extremely effective in stonewalling and speedkilling became a neccessity for both sides. Countless countries were saved due to the quick response time of everyone involved and many a killers were left frustrated as they were walled time and time again within seconds of starting a kill.

The Turning Point

After the Christmas ceasefire, NBK showed a unyielding determination by continuing to hit at full force and restart almost instantly while SOF had several key members go inactive due to various issues outside of the game. NBK was hitting at nearly double the rate of SOF and SOF was dropping in total countries everday as they were tiring of restarting and the inactive members were not replacing their dead. NBK began to gain on SOF's NW advantage and continued killing SOF's restarts before they could become a threat while slowly picking away at the remaining SOF originals. SOF continued killing NBK's top countries but they were not being replaced by restarts faster than SOF could kill them. It was now just a matter of time before SOF was tag killed and would lose all ability to effectively fight back. Due to the inopertune inactivty of key members of SOF and realizing that they were fighting a losing battle, SOF surrendered on Jan. 2nd [3] shortly after NBK passed SOF in total NW..

Final Warstats

Stat	NBK	SOF
Hits	117,465	79,574
Kills	534	295
HPK	220	270

Conclusion

In one of the most impressive wars FFA has ever seen both NBK and SOF gained a great deal of respect for each other's warring abilities and had SOF not had members go inactive after the Christmas ceasfire the outcome would have been much closer. The determining factor in this war was not warring ability but sheer activity as NBK proved once again that they are the dominate warring clan on the server and that they will restart faster than any other clan. SOF being a netting clan for the most part and also new to the server proved that they are a force to be reckoned with and have a bright future in FFA and can go toe to toe with anyone.