Afghan Alliance

Afghan Alliance was a loose, powerful alliance centered on TheMercs in spring and summer 2009.

*An account from Osium of TheMercs:*

The formation of Afghanistan was really an impromptu thing. We had never planned to create an alliance, nor had we any indication that we would become the most powerful force on the server. There is a difference between being the best fighters on the server, and being the most powerful force on the server. We were one of those from day one, the other one we matured into sometime in April. During our many raids into Hyperion lands there was this one group of players that consistently gave us good fights. These guys all had tagged themselves with the last name HAIL. Respecting good opponents I began a dialogue with them, essentially my goal was to subvert them from Hyperion and pull them into our fold. Our relationship continued to grow even though we continually fought each other in Hyperion lands, and often it was the arrival of HAIL to bolster the numerically superior Hyperion forces which would finally drive us off. However it wasn't HAIL that signed up first. TM and RN had lived in Hintenfau since the first day of final. It was our home. We were raided constantly by people trying to score a horse, or someone not paying attention with gear on. I credit this constant, heightened state of alert we were in as an advantage in later city raids on Aradoth. Our reaction time, and the violence of our counter attacks were complete and decisive.

While operating out of Hintenfau we laid claim to the central dungeon, and there we began to encounter heavy PvP to control it. One of the groups we began to run into in a frequent basis was the precursor guild to Panic, whose name escapes me. Their leader began to inform me through private messages that he intended to move his 60 or so super hardcore players into Hintenfau and to drive us out. I eventually convinced him we were not going anywhere, and such an attempt would result in a never ending circle jerk at the bindstone. He decided to try Ottenhall instead. It was then that the first Panic cockroaches appeared in Hintenfau. They could hear our macro'ers but they couldn't find them. They spent a good two or three days until a careless macro'er ran through the gap in the wall that was our macro club house. The Panic crew found our macro location.

Being rather pragmatic, I made contact with the Panic people immediately, established a relationship and offered to share Hintenfau with them. Having found our macro locations, they posed the first credible annoyance to our macroing. We took a potential enemy that could do real harm to our long term agenda and made a partnership with them, we were stronger for it as we picked up a solid core of good players. I must clarify, at this point there was no formal alliance. This was an informal, "You can PvP with us when we raid, and we won't fight each other in town" arrangement. The next day we made our first raid on Rubyiat. That same day I made the same pitch to HAIL, they accepted and joined us on Rubyiat the following day during our first week long invasion. We were still not Afghanistan at this point, and our alliance was still not formal. However the seeds had been sown, the name had been given by Bonedancer prophetically in a political overview he did some weeks earlier in which he indicated if anyone could unite the small warring clans in central Agon (Afghanistan) they would become a force.

That is where the name came from, we did not choose it ourselves, it was given to us. Initially the operation of our as yet unnamed informal alliance operated on unanimous consensus. TM were setting plans and policy, but HAIL and Panic were approached with all plans and consensus was reached. Later as the leadership of Panic and HAIL quit, these two guilds became more extensions of Afghanistan with TM as the brain. This is another reason for our rather unique level of success. Two guilds with skilled players and egos to go along with that skill completely subjugated their ambition, their own agenda to that of TM's and through that Afghanistan. It allowed us to have a singular command structure, with a singular goal, and a singular objective. There were no ulterior motives, all the guilds were singular branches of the same military apparatus. Alliances like Death and Cairn clearly had issues with multiple honchos with different ideas on how to achieve their goals. In any case, Afghanistan was born as a political entity as a result of this union.

It was one day early in final that I came to the decision that Afghanistan needed to strive for something that would set us apart, more importantly we needed something that would force guilds and alliances to engage us. This was prompted following one of our trips to Rubyiat in which we briefly stopped to raid Mar Shral. In very short order CotC had a solid 120 or more people on the walls facing us. A certain chubby guild leader had been carrying on a dialogue with me for some time at this point sent me a private tell. He said he would not allow his charges to come fight us because he did not want them to be slaughtered. This to the 35 man force outside his walls. It was then I knew, we needed warhulks, and we needed ships. Asset destruction was the only threat that could lure these people out of their cities to fight.

We immediately began putting our plan in motion. We began to buy up wood and iron ingots en-mass. It did not take long for us to construct our first ship, and the following day we upgraded to a Brigantine. We knew exactly what we had to do. We had to put the server on notice. For our plans to progress people had to fear our new weapons, and the will and ability to use them. Rubyiat and Dusk were our target. It was a strategic target. Our previous week long raid had left the alliance strained. It had plenty of well built coastal cities. Attacking Death or Cairn would have been a waste of an opportunity. Dusk would be made an example of. For a solid week, every day we would ride to Rubyiat, engage their defense forces on land, smash them and then field our warships razing cities. The first casualty was Adeptus, the first two nights we laid into their city completely razing it to the ground both nights. Adeptus then quit the alliance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGNsSzTcSI

Action depicting the first two nights on the Adeptus city can be seen here.

Some of our best times in the game occurred during the blitz of Dusk during this weekend. We had several massive battles, with 30-45 attackers, versus 60 to 80-90+ defenders. Huge open field archery and melee battles. After Adeptus called it quits, we turned our attention to the Bad Boys 4 Lyfe city. They were the self proclaimed badasses of Dusk and in truth they probably were. After three or four nights of the constant destruction of most of their city, Dusk imploded. Below is the first battle that proceeded the first night of asset destruction on BB4L city.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNJN3oH2mdQ

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6FGGMO0ghU

The attacks continued on Dusk for a few more days as we attempted to extort the defenders, however by this time the defense had broken down into small localized pockets of resistance. The composite guilds fending for themselves rather than sending help to each other. The only semblance of organized resistance came from the mainland guilds of Dusk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDgG3ipwd3k

Here we see the death throes of the Dusk alliance as Oromea and other mainland Dusk guilds attempt to drive off an Afghan force that was destroying the Sturmgrenadier city. As you can see they enjoyed about as much success as the native Rubyiaters. Also note the lack of magic used in this battle.

We had served notice to the server, we were a force the server had to respect now. The fear mongering on the forums during this period was quite hilarious. To say there was a ridiculous level of fear towards us in this history doesn't do the reality of the situation justice (It became even worse later on. When we invaded Niffleheim in July, the entire alliance was so terrified of fighting us they went all Mahatma Ghandi on us, rolled over and conceded defeat while pursuing a policy of non-violent placation until we had what we came for). This began our role on the server as a mercenary force. We offered our services, both land and sea based to the highest bidder. We primarily accepted payment in wood and iron as our next objective was to be a Frigate. Developers intervened however and nerfed the holy hell out of ships and we stopped attempting to make this ship at approximately 80% completed. They are still useless as a siege platform to this day. For example the brigantine with its ability to bring 3 guns on target was almost as effective as a 25 gun Man-O-War post nerf. Despite the nerf we found plenty of work. Hyperion began to hire us regularly, while we picked up odd jobs here and there to assist in siege prep work. To list the number of jobs and payment at this point would be futile. However in the first two weeks of our operation as a mercenary force and extortionists we easily netted a million gold in cash or wood/iron.

It was about this time that the anti-climactic battle known as World War 1 kicked off. We had two suitors for our services, Hyperion and CotC. We had stifled CotC twice already in Hamlet sieges at this point, both times at the Kompaniet hamlet north of Mar Shral. Our contract was free going into the war, Hyperion made an offer, I told CotC exactly what we were offered. However their leader seemed more interested in making less concrete intangible offers. Such as "CotC will make you famous", "You will be somebody under our command" along with vague promises of future payments. Hyperion offered resources, lots of wood and iron, what we valued above all else. CotC made hilarious offers to improve our stature. One of our first jobs was during the siege on Darkmoore. Savage Alliance had thrown in with Hyperion which kicked off WW1. We were hired by Savage Alliance to attack a hamlet Winterblade the same time Darkmoore was sieged. We took the hamlet and then were contracted to assist in the defense of Darkmoore. By the time we entered the city however the defense was a lost cause. CotC and Death were hammering down the Clanstone and the game was a total slideshow.

It was based on our experience with Darkmoore that we chose not to get involved in major sieges for a while. When our Hyperion contract during the end of WW1 began, we were primarily hired for non-siege time asset destruction which we carried out constantly against CotC guilds. We were involved in several hamlet sieges against CotC, twice we defended the Fallen Angels Hamlet during WW1 against CotC aggression. The following two videos are action from one of these sieges.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXdRgTJJY7I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M5Xhvu9Rf4

As you can see in this video, CotC had virtually zero success against us, and this trend continued throughout their limited remaining time in game. Our final day of contract work for Hyperion was rather farcical. We spent the entire day riding around from location to location not engaging in any fights, and when we were finally committed to battle, the server was in the process of crashing, the entire hamlet failed to load, players were floating where tree-houses should have been. Within two minutes of our arrival we had pushed into the hamlet and began clearing the entrenched siegers, then the server crashed. The day however began with a grand feint, we were sent to Seelie, home of KillCult to stand around and pull mean faces. We were then sent to a Mahirim NPC city to attempt to kill a Shard carrier who was barricaded in a tunnel blocked with nearly 30 defenders due to city mechanics at the time, it was impossible for us to war dec the half dozen or so guilds blockading. We gave it the old college try with needle volleys, the result was always the same, half the blockade dead, all of our aoe'rs killed by zap towers.

Hyperion threw in the towel and collapsed following this war. Our total siege record in WW1 at this point was two successful hamlet captures, three successful hamlet defenses, one failed hamlet attack and one server crash. One hamlet taken from SBA, one hamlet taken from CotC, three hamlets defended from CotC, one failed hamlet attack on CotC hamlet.

Up until this point Afghanistan had been a mercenary force, we were not overtly involved in politics, however due to the superior work of our growing spy network we came to control the majority of all Hyperion rare ore. This is when we became involved in the economic side of the game. First let me address the rare ore. We robbed Hypertron twice in the lead up to WW1. First through a defector from Anvil Society who brought with him their entire rare ore bank. Next through a spy we were able to lift a substantial quantity of rare ore from Hyperion itself.

Economically speaking up until this point the majority of our liquid assets came from individual mage or devil farming. This was organized only insofar as we attempted and successfully locked down 2 of the 3 devil spawns, and all of the best mage spawns on the northern side of the map. We even had certain individuals farming mages on some islands off the west coast. As a guild we made our money from mercenary work. However it was during the end of WW1 that we realized we needed something more. Simply put, we became probably the single largest merchant force in the game. Alternate accounts were acquired. We used well known traders to buy up huge quantities of materials in Mahirim lands at what were highly discounted prices. We would then resell these materials in the Human and Alfar markets. We became the federal reserve for Darkfall during this time. Chances are if you bought a large quantity of anything, we were involved either directly selling it, or we were the money behind the merchant who was. Only one major merchant that I can think of during this period was not either one of us, or working for us and that is because he was working for a gold selling site. I won't give his name away but I'm sure you can figure it out. During this time, we were also buying up every scrap of rare ore that was available outside the major power blocs. By the time we took Aradoth, we controlled probably 90% of the rare ore that had been mined out of Agon, and probably 90% from Yssam, as well as the vast majority of the rare ore from Rubiyat. Cairn and Niffle were the two regions I don't think we got anything from.

In the immediate aftermath of WW1 we were pulled into the Dusk remnant vs ShadowBane Alliance war. Dusk (TCA) was dead set on taking Erinthel. How this happened was essentially this: SBA gave us a bloody nose one afternoon when we were pissing around doing asset destruction on the Shipwrecked Pirates zeppelin city. They ambushed us with close to 2x our numbers as we ran around over confident looking for their force. We were going through a period of turnover, many new recruits made up our force. We kited them, ran many of them out of stamina, we called for the dismount and fight. We dismounted and then half of our force turned and ran away. First and only time that ever happened. SBA had given us what I consider our only real loss, a fight we should have won, by killing half a dozen or so of us in that fight. We then began going at SBA pretty hard. Naturally this resulted in TCA contacting us for mercenary work against SBA to capture Erinthal. We also had our eye on Erinthal and when TCA informed me that they were thinking about using us to take it, initially I said nothing but then informed them I would have to think about it as we had our eye on it as well. Ultimately we used my plan for the TCA. It started with a siege prep, destroying all their housing and defensive structures as well as strategic walls and gates. TCA was to launch the siege immediately at server up, move into the city enforce and hold it vs SBA counter attacks. Afghanistan would login and arrive at Erinthal when the siege went live and provide the extra muscle to finish taking the city. Well things didn't go exactly as planned. TCA dropped the siege about two and a half hours late. I decided to stay up during the server downtime so I could assist with the logistics immediately on server up. As a result I said 'fuck it' about an hour after they dropped the siege and went to sleep. When I woke up, I woke up to a shit storm of accusations. First Afghanistan didn't uphold its end of the bargain. Actually, there was no bargain, this was pro-bono work. We used 15 mortars and hundreds of battle spikes doing the night before prep work. That was the extent of siege weapon contribution that we agreed to. Second we were accused of not logging on for the siege. We never agreed we would hold a devastated city for them, it should have been easy. Due to their late siege drop SBA was able to rebuild most of the city. We had promised to show up when the siege went live to help them finish the job. Third, we were accused of not bringing siege weapons to the actual siege. Again we never said we would. After this, I kindly informed TCA they were retarded and that we would be presenting them with a bill for the work we did do. Some peons talked plenty of shit, but in private their leadership bent over and coughed up nearly 200k for us. At the end of the day a mutual respect was established between SBA and Afghanistan. Following our occupation of Aradoth we established a mutual defense pact. We would not offensively siege with each other unless our mutual enemies were working in concert against one of us. We would only pledge to defend each other IF multiple enemy alliances sieged one of our cities and even then it was up to the sieged party to decide if they wanted help or not.

People also had this wild misconception that magic had entered the game in a big way very early on. The truth is that the first people to get high levels of magic were few and far between and I believe the first person to get 100 fire got it in may. It wasn't until the end of June that any single force could field more than about 5 people with one school over 90. It wasn't until August that people could cycle high end aoe's and the fact is EU1 was a dead zone from the end of June until the sea tower patch.

The first person on the server to hit 100 in a non-gimped magic school (air) was Robi from LoD. About this time Afghanistan was contracted by a guild living north of Hintenfau to take out a shard carrier hiding in Aradoth. We made good on the contract, rolling into Aradoth and killing the shard carrier. However something about this job peaked our interest. Aradoth had a zap tower inside the bank room. Aradoth had long narrow tunnels leading into the bank room making it highly defendable. We were just getting our first high level mages out the door at this time, Zen and Natas were both just past 75 fire and as such had the highly annoying fire field spell. At that moment we decided to siege Aradoth from the KFC alliance. We went back to hintenfau, picked up a shard and created a new guild to hold the city, primarily to hide the fact it was Afghanistan responsible for the siege. Phohammar dropped the siege and then we promptly knocked his ass 80 feet in the air to land on top of an unreachable spire outside of Hintenfau.

Drama started almost immediately. Spies in CotC informed us that CotC was going to move to assist KFC against us. Then spies in Death informed me that Bonedancer was preparing to lead a 40ish man group to Aradoth to get involved as well. I opened a dialogue with Bone to gauge his intent and dissuade him from getting involved. The worry wasn't that they would stop us, in the confined fighting we were expecting we knew they wouldn't, our worry was more over the possibility of a giant cluster fuck causing the server to lag and thereby removing our tactical, strategic and player skill advantage. In the end Bone lead Death ironically to their death by siding with CotC and KFC. In what was easily one of my top 10 moments in Darkfall, Galgorth logged on his Awful Company character, logged into their ventrilo and joined the 60ish man raid force riding to join up with KFC for the defense. I prepped our 27-30 man crew and started riding south. A few minutes after leaving Mar Shral Galgorth dropped from his group and joined a group with me. Using his icon on the map I was able to guide the Afghan forces to a nearly flawless ambush. Gluttony led the CotC force directly for Aradoth and chose to lead his raid through the enclosed devil spawn. On the west side is the lake which is ringed by an impassable wall with an entrance to the north and to the south. I split our force in two, leading the northern force myself we jumped into the exit tunnel blocking them inside. Due to timing part of their force was able to escape out the southern tunnel before our southern force led by Rekuul closed the tunnel. The end result however was Gluttony dead with 75% of his force. The second attempt to reach Aradoth by CotC was much smaller as a result of this.

When we arrived at Aradoth there was no defense outside the bank room. Death took up positions in the skeleton room in the western tunnels. Our first attempt came down the eastern tunnel but we could not get good fire on target (This was our first usage of higher end cannons) produced by our merchant characters and contacts. We switched positions and dug in at the Y fork between the skeleton room and the stone room. We then laid down 1 head shot and 1 dragon cannon at a time to pound the shard and 1 headshot facing the Death forces in the skeleton room. Zen and Natas rotated their annoying field AoE which definitely kept the pressure up. Death fought hard against us for probably 20 minutes, suffering heavy casualties while inflicting zero on us. Once the battle was no longer in question, the stone at sub 20% Bonedancer lead Death in an attack on KFC and CotC in a giant chickenshit backstab. The only explanation I have for this reversal is that Bone felt that by turning on the defenders he could somehow take some credit for our victory.

Once we controlled Aradoth the game changed for us. We could macro around the clock with virtual impunity. Additionally, as a result of CotC engaging us in the siege a state of war was established between Afghanistan and CotC. We quickly bought up the stone we needed for two more towers and a foundry and we used the wood we had accumulated from our earlier efforts to build a frigate to finish those modules. Within 48 hours we had two new towers up and a foundry. Once we had the foundry up we dumped all of our warhulk ores into creating modules. Everything was happening at a frenetic pace. We sincerely believed that Death and CotC would collaborate to siege us in those opening days as we believed them to be at least moderately astute and that to allow us access to a foundry with the resources to make use of it criminal. The morning we constructed the first vileforge we were convinced a siege would occur that morning. As it turned out it didn't.

During this period of time we had been hatching our grand plan for the decapitation of CotC, a siege on Mar Shral. The plan was essentially this. Use contacts and spies within CotC to mark 50+ runes to the plateau in Mar Shral. We would then launch a siege on Mar Shral. Two specific sieges would be set. The first siege would be a bluff, we would use the siege to pin CotC forces at Mar Shral while we used our two vile forges with flame throwers to rapidly destroy Andruk. If CotC committed from Mar Shral to protect Andruk our entire raid force would recall to the plateau, deploy cannons and capture Mar Shral in a matter of minutes. In theory the plan was flawless. We would drop sieges on Mar Shral whenever we wanted to level a city, trading the siege fee for the cost to repair the damage would have been heavily in our favor. Eventually CotC would grow weary of false sieges, under protect Mar Shral and we would swoop in and take it. Unfortunately vileforge flame throwers were not siege weapons and as such did not deal building damage. This basically rendered our entire push for warhulks as a massive waste of time. They were expensive, difficult to drive due to terrible clipping issues and they did less damage than mortars. The flamethrowers not working on buildings was a massive disappointment for us. We then changed the plan. We would dick around with Andruk for awhile, buy up some mercenary guilds to deal with the nearly 200 people sitting in Mar Shral and then attempt to smash Mar Shral with a picket line screening a series of cannons.

One of the major misconceptions here is that we had an unlimited number of cannons. We didn't, I think in total we had around 33 dragon cannons, maybe 30 headshot and untold mortars Parfex created when he skilled up. We used around 15 Dragon cannons and 10 headshots at the Mar Shral siege. The plan actually went flawlessly. We set up outside Mar Shral broke down the wall and began putting fire on the clan stone. This was the first big siege we had actually taken part of and so we did not know about bug which allowed CotC to rebuild the walls during the siege. Even that however did not really defeat us. It was a tough blow and we were out of time to go get more cannons and take the wall down again. I believe the stone was at around 30 to 35% when the wall went back up. We then went for our ace in the hole, the recall runes we had to the plateau. This is where everything went tits up. Only Afghanistan had the recall runes, and when we recalled at least 80% of us crashed. Of that 80% probably 30% ended up back in Aradoth. We arrived on the plateau two or three at a time. SBA did a good job of holding the base of the plateau but we simply did not arrive in sufficient quantity to finish the job. The remaining dragon cannons were deployed in a last gasp effort to take the stone down but time was running out and bind rushers began to slip past SBA, past our needle volleys at the elevator and to begin harassing us on the cannons.

We had lost the siege to a bug. At the end of the day we moved on and adapted. However as a result of CotC calling the Dusk remnant to the defense of Mar Shral, we activated our offensive siege clause with SBA. Neither SBA nor Afghanistan wanted to escalate the war, we would have been far more happy fighting our individual wars, however CotC moved to escalate it, and SBA was in a sense forced into helping Afghanistan or else it would have faced Dusk and CotC by itself. We began offensive siege operations at a high tempo combined with constant asset destruction. When WW2 began I predicted on the forums it would be all over in two weeks. The first weekend saw the siege of Mar Shral the following weekend saw the siege of Hal'Kalic and Tughri and the counter siege of Erinthel. Tughri saw Cairn jump in to gobble up the scraps. They piggy backed onto the SBA/Afghan offensive siege. This was a hard fought battle and Cairn showed just how completely incompetent they were. We moved into the city, tore down an outside wall and then camped in firing range of the clanstone. Cannon batteries exchanged fire, TM with its few AoE magic users created a fire team to mop up trouble spots while SBA held the left flank and RN held the right flank. Cairn was supposed to move into the city as well, instead they stood outside the wall and fought a handful of naked people trying to push into the city. Ultimately Cairn collapsed, pressure from reinforcements mandated part of our force turning to face the growing force outside. When the pressure let up on the clanstone, TCA rebuilt the curtain wall we had taken down, the siege lost we were forced to retreat. I was one of the last to leave the city and was killed outside by the river. I dropped around 3 headshot cannons and 10 or 11 mortars. CotC and TCA forces unable to get their story straight claimed I dropped anywhere from 15 headshots and 20+ mortars to 20+ Dragon Cannons. In actual fact, we brought ~6 Dragon Cannons which we used, 10 Headshots and we had to make a mad dash to the bank to get more mortars and headshots out as we had run out of cannons. By this time in the fighting we were dangerously low on manufactured Dragon Cannons.

We then regrouped without Cairn whom we derided for generally sucking, and made a mad dash for Hal'Kalic or Vindi city. Fighting was fierce but brief. We were woefully outnumbered as we had lost many SBA and Afghan fighters to breaks. We pushed in briefly, setup a perimeter and began putting fire on the clanstone before we were overrun and had to retreat back to Erinthel to defend there.

The following video depicts action during these sieges.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5wLuLvhlZU

In the video we see the devastating defeat CotC and TCA suffered to SBA and Afghan forces as they attempted to breach into Erinthel. Notice in the video the differences in discipline between the two alliances. When on the defense they were simply numbers and lag. When we were on the defense we showed superior restraint and fire discipline to lure them into a bottleneck that resulted in the death of a massive portion of their force nearly instantly. Again, notice the magic used in the mass kill. Primarily mana missiles and needles with a scattering of rank 50 fireballs and rank 75 fire fields one volcano user (Zen) and a wall of force.

Nothing was settled at the end of the first week, things would change the following weekend. Afghanistan upped its game in asset destruction on CotC, nearly every day we would level an alliance members city. We also began concocting our second offensive the following weekend. Our target changed from Mar Shral to Andruk. Andruk was very close to Aradoth and belonged to an important member of the CotC alliance, KGB. Phase 1 was the razing of all CotC aligned bind stones near Andruk by Afghanistan. Phase 2 was the occupation and razing of Andruk itself. This entailed destroying towers and as much housing as possible. Phase 3 was the denial of Andruk by SBA forces while Afghanistan using its spies within CotC launched spoiling attacks on rallying CotC/TCA forces. Afghanistan was successful in several spoiling attacks, our timing was usually impeccable. In one instant during this phase however our timing was slightly off. Galgorth, our spy master was using his informants to advise us to CotC and TCA rally points and movements. We got word that TCA and CotC were moving to merge up, individually they had roughly 80 players each, to our 40ish. We knew we could roll either force individually and so we moved as quickly as possible to intercept the CotC force before it joined with the TCA force. We thought we were in time, as we jumped off our mounts and engaged a wall of enemy mounts coming over a low hill just south of ottenhall. At first I thought they were going to ignore us and ride through taking whatever casualties we managed to inflict. At first we thought it was just CotC, but that wall of enemy mounts rolling over the hill didn't end. It kept coming and coming and coming. All told there was over 160 guys rolling by 37 to 40 of us. I still thought they were riding by, then they started to turn and it was a sea of bad guys riding down on us. I called the retreat, we mounted up and hauled ass. We lost a half dozen guys and probably demounted close to 30 of them. This began what we can call the last ride of the CotC/TCA alliances. We rode in amongst them literally shoulder to shoulder. We frantically informed SBA of the massive clusterfuck of retardation bearing down on them and told them we would be arriving in the middle of it as we raced for Andruk. Hasty battle plans were drawn, we would hold the northwest corner against all comers for the next 1:45 to 2 hours.

Again the 5 or so TM with aoe magic became the fire brigade. RN held one corner, SB held the other and the most epic street to street battle since Stalingrad went down. Literally 80 SBA and Afghanis fought roughly 150 to 160 bad guys. We fought in the streets, we fought in the alleys, we fought in houses and we fought on the walls. We fought in the hills outside Andruk as both sides dead rearmed and rode back to the battle. They would surge forward, threatening to overrun our positions and we would push back. It was a constant struggle. Slowly but surely however our vastly superior kill/death ratio began to tell. We were in the ascendency for the last half hour, in part because Death alliance had arrived to crash the party and was roaming around Andruk with a massive cluster fuck of their own picking off stragglers as they rushed back to the city to rejoin the fight. This strangulation of the city impacted CotC and TCA more than it impacted us, less of us died, which meant less of us had to return. We also organized groups to sally out of the city, push Death away and allow our reinforcements to get back into the city. By the time the siege went live CotC and TCA were desperately pressing us and Death was also attempting to breach into the NW corner of Andruk by riding up onto the hill and leaping with their mounts directly into the city. It was hairy, touch and go, but in the end we held off the last desperate CotC/TCA rush and the increasingly aggressive Death attacks. With the ground around the stone secure we quickly dispatched the Bindstone in a manner of minutes with two of our few remaining Dragon Cannons.

The following day, demoralized and defeated CotC and TCA disbanded. SBA and TM ceased carrying out offensive sieges together and SBA continued its private war with the Oromea the holders of Tughri. Afghanistan took possession of Mar Shral through a careholder group. SBA ultimately sold Andruk to a group of ex Hyperion turned Mercenaries whom became an auxiliary force of Afghanistan.

CotC had fallen as predicted in two weeks. Our arsenal however was in rough shape. We had expended virtually all of our dragon cannons and as a result we were forced to rely on warhulks for most siege operations from then on.

Peace was short lived however as adventurous Afghans began probing Death. The war that resulted between Death and Afghanistan was at least from our perspective a war for sport. We simply wanted PvP. Sieges were never considered. Statements of capability were made when we repeatedly occupied, locked down and razed Sun Throne, the seat of Sinister. However no plans were ever made to actually take assets from Death.

In any case, these was a battle between the two server powerhouses. Death outnumbered us, and through those numbers they presented an equally sized group of advanced magic users. By the time CotC fell we had 5 or 6 members with 1 school over 90. When hostilities with Death began in earnest we probably had 8 or 9 people ranging from 1 to 2 schools at or over 90. Death had similar numbers. Magic was beginning to take over the game, it hadn't quite yet completely taken over yet. Maybe 10% of Deaths force would be using rank 50+ magic, and perhaps 25% of our force.

When we fought WW2 against CotC Magic was a force multiplier, but this was still the early days. We didn't have the numbers or players with it, or players with multiple schools to really turn fights on their ears. You need only refer to earlier open field fights with CotC in which we were outnumbered 2+:1 and took a couple casualties to see that 5 people with a 50 damage aoe field nuke was not going to change the outcome of the battle. We were already smashing them. What the limited aoe's allowed us to do, was to have a better chance in the laggy, less skillful siege environments where we were outnumbered by MASSIVE numbers of players.

City fighting is an altogether different beast than normal fighting. Numbers count for more, mobility is lost. The aoe magic we had in WW2 was not battle changing in the scale of fighting we had. It wasn't war changing. It was tactical in nature allowing us to counter hordes in laggy sieges. It became more a tool of suppression than a tool of killing. We still killed predominantly with fireballs and arrows.

When we fought Death, magic was in the ascendency, no doubt about it, both sides relied heavily on our magic wielding players. The difference was our mobility and command and control. Death was a large, bloated, unwieldy force. Fights typically went like this. We would attack, press, retreat, attack, press. Death was unable to react to or cope with our tactical tempo in these fights. They would pursue our feigned retreats directly into our next attack and press. We would also move along the flanks, with one flank retreating drawing enemies into enfilading fire (flanking) often times our right flank would hold while the left retreated, the right flank would then split, part pressing the forces opposite it, while a second part moved in behind the forces pursuing the retreating left flank. General panic would ensue on behalf of Death, Bone would usually die within seconds of contact and then urge his force on by droning "push" over and over.

Death ultimately had their most success against us by simply outnumbering us significantly, 2:1 or more and by staying all mounted. In one battle they managed to score perhaps as many as 10 kills using this tactic before being routed and chased off suffering at least two times as many deaths.

The following video is perhaps the best example of our patience in dealing with Death, and our superior coordination as we deliver an absolutely crushing defeat on them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPQwfKzV4-E&feature=related

The back story of this video is that we made contact with a massive Death force near a Sinister hamlet up near the northern coast perhaps 2 hours earlier. We were outnumbered at the time at least 3:1. Being confident but not stupid the game of cat and mouse began. We began maneuvering to find an advantageous position to fight from. We dismounted two separate times on reverse slopes and offered battle which Death seemed reluctant to charge into. Both times we mounted up and vacated the position before Death could envelope us. The third time we attempted to flank Death from a high mountain peak, we instead ran into a small mounted scouting party which escaped. It was night and extremely foggy at the time, neither force could see more than 40 feet and both forces settled down and waited for sunlight. Contact was lost with the Death force and we returned to the Hamlet to finish smashing it. Our spies then logged in and we had intel on Death movements. We then moved towards the old Anvil Society city. We bombed the shit out of it, razing essentially the entire city when word came down that Death had formed up another raid force, this one perhaps 30% smaller than the first, and was moving to engage us. In the video the first brief battle sequence is an ambush we set for them when our spy told us they were bizarrely swimming towards the island we were hiding out on while waiting for them to ride past us so we could move in behind them. The second battle is the culmination of the two forces finally coming to terms with each other and engaging. There really isn't any fancy maneuvering by our guys in this battle, this is for two reasons. First, they had the high ground and the superior position. I underestimated how quickly they would advance on us. Two, they flanked us with a large cavalry force almost immediately. Three, I was out in front when the cavalry flanked us and I was making contact with the lead elements of their foot soldiers. I spent basically the entire fight in the middle of their infantry running in circles like a retard trying to stay alive.

This was the beginning of the end for us in Darkfall. A few things became apparent. First with the announcement of the NA server, EU1 basically became a ghost town and it remained so until the seatower patch. Two, a frightening trend began to emerge amongst the core TM players. Each time one of us reached 100 in a school of magic, that player's interest in the game became a ticking clock. The rank 50+ nukes were spammy. They did not require the skill of archery and fireballs, and ultimately they would ruin PvP. The simple enjoyment of PvP was lost when we started using these abilities. So sure, by late July and August when we had 10+ people all cycling 2+ schools we were insanely powerful, it wasn't fun. Moreover, this level of character development was reached well after we had basically withdrawn from the game on a serious level. By the end of June we were doing nothing, just sitting around and macroing. Zen was one of the lone holdouts who played religiously beyond July.

There are plenty of no name revisionist retards out there who will tell anyone who will listen we left the server because people were "catching up" and we were "losing battles". We were not losing battles. We had already fought the best alliance out there that rivaled and even exceeded our own character development and they scored a couple of kills per fight if they were lucky. Two things led us to leave. EU1 was a graveyard, and we didn't want to participate in spamfest AoE magic battles. Everyone knows that style of game play is not fun, everyone yearns for a return to archery and rank 50's but you can't because to be competitive you need to use the less skillful, less fun higher ranked magic.

The fact is, our bread and butter was archery and needles. That is what we established our reputation on. That is what we mopped up forces 2 and 3x our number with repeatedly. The evidence is here in this history in the videos. AoE magic was a late comer in our story. It showed up at the very end, did not have a meaningful impact in WW2, and when we had a serious AoE capability the main force we fought had an equally deadly AoE capability. The simple truth is we won in every stage of the game. We won all the fights when it was melee. We won all the fights when it was archery. We won all the fights when it was archery and rank 50's and we won all the fights when higher end magic came into play.

Do we think we will ever return to DF? Not in its current state. We want nothing to do with the magic spamfest the game currently is. If Adventurine removed every single nuke in the game beyond rank 50, Afghanistan would ride again, and really, is there anyone honestly out there that would not rather return to that style of combat?

At the end of the day, we left DF in its prime. Before magic got out of control. Before the servers were ghost towns. We defined how later guilds played the game. The current power guilds of EU1 and NA1 have all followed our blueprint and are still trying, and failing to replicate our command structure, our communication system and our tactical ability. We have no regrets about leaving, only the turn DF took with high end magic. People may read this account and say it is trumped up, they may say it is bullshit. Know that you're just like everyone else we've run over. The reason it seems so unbelievable, is because it is completely made up years after the fact. That doesn't however make this account untrue. It does mean we couldn’t cope with an even playing field. This is the history of TheMercs and our alliance Afghanistan in Darkfall.

(Some known sieges and wars: In mid-May they took a central city from Mortis Consortium.)