It seams that although some have predicted the supremacy of Death Squadron, things are still quite on dispute. Relic Wars is on a new stage, no rest for Orion’s Belt troops out there. It seams that a major coalition had being formed to attack Death Squadron. A major fight is being held at a relic:

Death Squadron still hold the 12 relics, but how long will it take for them to loose one? One of the major strengths of DS is their ability to organize themselves. I have never seen other alliances with this degree of organization. I believe that the main reason is that managing war takes time, and the majority of players want to play the game at a slower pace. They want to participate, but want others to manage the logistics. I’m one of those.

There may be a lack of management, but I still want to help. I’ve made several attacks on DS on the past, but I’ve been left alone for a while, and that was great for rebuilding my armies. Now I want to help the resistance, and with some degree of success. I may play well on the board, but my latest offensive was futile, and made little damage. New war tactics are forming up each day on Orion’s Belt, and I didn’t adapt. My armies were crushed down by simple fleet combos and devastation.

Well, I won’t make that mistake again. It’s clear that it’s not a good idea to be on the universe with a big fleet. Big fleets can be slowed down, have their light units destroyed and fall down without handing damage at all. They may also be intercepted and target with a devastation. My strategy will now be different: I’ll create several small to average fleets. I’ll be a dangerous opponent with any of these fleets, but I may be crushed against a bigger fleet. Even so, instead of one opportunity I now have the ability to target several opponents.

And while doing that, even playing solo and not following the main war, I’ll give DS just another problem to solve, and more resources to allocate to another front. Time will tell if my brave legions will be successful or not.

From my point of view Relic Wars had several stages by now. First, it started by alliances getting them as fast as they could. Then System Lords betrayed all their allies and fought for the relics, getting to 8 relics at a time. After that, System Lords were attacked by several alliances, the most notorious one being Death Squadron. The DS won the last stage… they became the most powerful alliance. They are big, they have lots of resources and members, and are well organized. And they managed to force System Lords into hiding in the shadows.

A couple of days ago the DS started to attack the last relics that they are missing. The major target are ALPHA, the other alliance with relics. This is a major threat against the free world, and we could face a scenario where DS have all the relics and win the major prize.  This will mean that DS will become the supreme force on the universe, making the game completely unbalanced.

A rebellion against the DS is forming. The best independent players are joining forces against this threat and I’m guessing that this current stage will last for a long time. I hope that this stage will significantly weaken the DS, but it will be a very hard battle.  Even so it’s very interesting to see how things are forming up… New tactics will emerge from this situation, and I’m very curious to see how things will proceed.

Waza was a fleet I created a long time ago 3 months ago and it has a great story to tell. She was destroyed yesterday against a mighty Queen, just after an epic victory. Week and without reinforcements, there was nothing left for Waza but to destroy as many of the coward enemies as it could. After the battle ended I went to see the battle history of this fleet. This fleet was created before the Relic Wars and got a pretty nice journey.

• Against Ashis - 07/04/2009 - After leaving System Lords, Ashis started to attack me. He raided many of my planets and I had to create fleets to patrol them. Waza was created at this time to protect my borders and was sent to battle against Ashis minions. It was an average fleet: 810 Worm, 56 Spider, 150 HeavySeeker, 120 Destroyer, 386 Stinger and some lights

• Against Ashis - 07/09/2009 - After destroying the first Ashis fleet, Waza went to the next. Ashis didn’t have strong fleets and he was suffering some losses

• Against Ashis - 07/16/2009 - Easy win

• Against Ashis - 07/16/2009- Another easy win

• Against Ashis - 07/20/2009 - Another easy win… this is getting boring…

• Against Basaf - 07/28/2009 - Another easy win while patrolling my borders

• Against Danceman - 08/03/2009 - Yet another easy win… this will get interesting, I swear!

• Against Danceman - 08/04/2009 - Yet another easy win…

• Against Danceman -  08/05/2009 - Another easy win, all these battles against Danceman were to slow me down to get to their relics. It provide me with many bounty points

• Against Punisher - 08/07/2009 - The battle I described earlier here

• Against Punisher - 09/24/2009 - The final battle… after an epic battle, Punisher cowardly attacked my unprotected Waza and got the win

Humz… When I saw that Waza had a spree of 11 wins, this sounded more interesting. After all many of the battles were very easy. Even so, my brave spartans made a great job against all the thugs on the universe!

Early today I suffered a devastation on three planets and a fleet. At this moment we don’t provide much information on the messages, so the only thing I knew was that someone fired a devastation somewhere that damaged a fleet and three planets from my empire. This direct attack cost me 50 low level combat units. What a waste.

But that’s not all… a couple of minutes ago I was attacked by several players on several planets and a relic This seams to be the second part of a planned attack against me. I even got attacked by a player that I never saw and that isn’t on any of my enemy alliances! I think it’s just a coincidence.

Spending so much time and resources planning an attack against me isn’t very smart. The only justification is that I could be more fragile after a previous journey. These thugs did a major mobilization to destroy just a couple of combat units. They might raid me, but fortunately for me, I spend all the resources that I need, and those that I don’t, I put yesterday on the alliance’s storehouse. So, all this attack will take time and resources from them, and it won’t do me much harm.

War is mainly about economy. When the System Lords engaged on the Relic Wars the objective was clear: win relics, gain income. This attack’s objective may be to weaken me, but I guess it won’t work as expected. Even so, I’m very proud to make my enemies gather like this just to strike me. I’m the Special One! You mess with my family, I kick! 

I’ve been building up a master fleet to attack my enemies on the Relic Wars. I had a Queen and I spent a couple of weeks building the following fleet:

• ~550 Spider; 1550 Worm; 200 Stinger; 105 Heavy Seeker;  350 Seeker; 70 Raptor; 36 Eagle; 35 Vector and of course: the Queen

This is a very powerful fleet, even more powerful at my hands. As you can imagine, I bought at the auction house the Vector, Eagle and Raptor, to balance the fleet (considering Levyr weaknesses). They were supposed to give me the zone control I needed to open ways for all the raw power that I had.

When I started to move it, I made the error of bragging about it to an admiral of Death Squadron. I said to him that this fleet was unbeatable, no one could win against it, or at least I tought so. Death Squadron are a really organized alliance and they played very well their cards against my super fleet. First, they detected it under their radar when I was a system way from their relic. They started a combat with a dummy fleet to check me out. Then they gave up and fired a Devastation on my Queen. I suffered losses, but I had so many units that my Queen was still very strong.

Then they allocated one of their renegade warriors to battle my fleet face to face. This warrior attacked me with the following units:

• 53 Kamikaze; 300 Toxic; 137  Vector; 84 Doomer; 1100 Anubis; 550 Dark Crusader

This was a remarkable fleet. Many combat units were lost on this epic battle. I won the battle but with heavy losses. The most important one was the loss of my Queen. At the end of the match I had left:

• 378 Stinger; 432 Spider; 1300Worm

All the rest was lost. I tought about going back to my hot zone and rebuild, but I was attacked the next instance by this fleet:

• 1 Queen; 169 HiveProtector; 1201 Worm; 150 Heavy Seeker; 40 Interceptor; 40 Spider; 400 Seeker

Wow… Some heavy power on this Levyr brother. Without light units to use as cannon fodder I had quite the challenge. I didn’t think I’d make it, because my opponent could easilly bring to life many Maggots that would destroy me. I used Worms as cannon fodder and the fight was balanced until my opponent made a mistake, and then run away. Even so I lost againt many units, and at the end of the battle I was left with:

• 681 Worm; 268 Spider;  278 Singer

At this point I was able to retreat to my private zone. I could hunt down his queen, but my fleet was already very fragile, so I choose to go back and rebuild it. This epic journey was very cool and taught me one thing: no matter how strong is your fleet, it can be taken down! No stronger player can win against a well organized alliance.

Some while ago, Mawhrin-Skel talked about a glory of the past, funnynovato.

I’ve been changing some emails with him and he sent me 2 pictures from the first version of Orion’s Belt. Seems nostalgic doesn’t it?

It’s been like this for quite a while. My fleet can’t escape these Death Squadron thugs. They come in line for a certain defeat! The interesting thing is that I sent this fleet to a far away place. But it seams that they’re are protecting something nearby… after cleaning this persian scum my spartan warriors will scout a bit.

This sittuation also shows the need for immunity on the fleets. They just give up and attack me right away.

Some time ago System Lords went on a campaign for relics and turned against their allies ALPHA and Prophets of the Revolution. Because of this sneak attack we won quite a fame and alliances started to dislike us, but the truth is: war is profitable. At this time System Lords have 8 relics under their possession. System Lords spent a lot of time earning income from +6 relics, and that was really profitable.

As expected, we got some enemies. We got some shy attacks from ALPHA and the Prophets, and we also were under attack by Corsários. The only friend we had left was Death Squadron…. until today. Today, on an expected move, Death Squadron declared war on System Lords and attacked one relic. We don’t know much about this attack, but we do know that it was carefully planned and that it is just the beginning… We also don’t know what kind of pacts DS made with our current enemies. But having 8 relics, it’s normal to have DS turn on us.

I sense that there is going to be a lot of blood shead on the times to come. System Lords armies got some time to rest, and now they’re mobilizing again for battle. And they’re anxious for it!

I was having a look at the ELO standings, saw that Ikkie was still on a no lost streak. Before I say how many wins without ANY losses, I want to point two things out.

-First the last person to hold the record, for most matches without any defeats was at 33/0, (i forget who it was be he is very handsome) good yea. but Ikkie has topped that, and is still going! I made 33 and 0 before alot of my opponents knew how to play well, that is not to say that i didn’t have any hard fights but it was more easy ones than hard ones, that brings me to my second point.

-Players like Reborned (current number #1 in ladder) Nunos, Mawhrin-Skel, Firiten, and myself(to name a few) have been playing this battle system for a long time. Nunos has been playing it for years! and Ikkie just for 126 days… He may not have played all the top level players yet but he has played some them (and alot of other players) and have not lost to anyone!!

So what is Ikkie’s record for ELO games without any losses? 38 and 0… Great Job Ikkie. I hope you keep this undefeated recorded going… that is until we fight in tournament play.