WOTBB 20 – ICA

Original date of blog: March 31st, 2015

Not too long after the drama thread was binned, LOCA entered alliance-talks with Polish Force, another great Clan out there. It stood to reason to enter those talks, since three members of LOCA are also in Polish Force (PF) (Raven, Panther-formerly-known-as-Bunny, and Eagle). They have some very good players, but are organised very differently from us. For one, PF exists only of Polish players, and we exist of a lot of nationalities.

In order to announce said Alliance, I actually wrote a bit of a children’s story to introduce it and show how the clans had met. This of course with all the dry humour I could muster and using animal aliases for everyone. It received some mixed reactions. People laughed, or people barfed. Just the amount of barf-animations had me in stitches. But nevertheless, the statement was made. LOCA and PF are befriended and attacking one means attacking the other.

We actually have no problem with players being in both clans, even though there recently was a shift in power in PF and two of the three guys in both clans are now leading PF together with the original leader. Together they are Raven, Eagle and Lynx. Panther migrated to LOCA fully, and one other guy, who’s yet to be given an animal name by me, moved from PF to LOCA as well.

Overall, the changes don’t really matter that much. Not for LOCA anyway. Come Clan Wars, we’ll be shifting members about to make the most formidable teams, and the only times we’ll actually duke it out is when we’re the last two clans fighting over the price. We named the alliance ICA, which stands for International Clan Alliance. We did that, because it will give us the opportunity to invite other Clans later on. We don’t plan on adding others soon though.

Communications don’t always run very smoothly, but the guys in PF are very nice and fun guys, so I’m pretty sure we’ll work through any problems that might arise. As it is, we get along just great, even though the way the two clans are run are totally different.

However, knowing we will not really fight against one another has not kept us from hosting the most fun thing I’ve witnessed since I first began playing this game, the first Clan Event of ICA. In short, we had around 25 people on TeamSpeak, a mixture of LOCA and PF. The only ones in a platoon were those platooning with people unable to be on TS, the rest were solo. Being the only female, and thus having a recognizable voice, I did the count-down, and we all hit battle at the same time.

I’ve never been a part of something so random. We managed to get a few battles where all fourteen players in the match were a part of either LOCA or PF. This of course meant that it was no battle at all – they messed about, taking funny screenshots of the two teams together in fun positions and letting things become a draw. But most of the time, even if not all teams were LOCA and PF, we had at least 8 people in a match.

After an hour or two, we left tiers X and IX where we had been hanging out, and moved on… to tier II. Tier II exists of very small and cute little tanks. There is no better tier to be in that’s just too random and funny. It is slightly better and faster than tier I. While driving around in there, some of us (not me, to be sure) even managed to get some bombardier medals (meaning you manage to kill off two tanks with one shot).

By then, we had formed platoons, and I was lucky enough to have teamed up with Chimp. Though, truth be told, I had reserved him for the night beforehand. If anyone could keep me from looking too bad and from noobing too much, it would be him, so it seemed like a safe and good bet to make.

The whole event was very bad for our ratings, to be sure, but it was so incredibly fun. Everyone talking at the same time, the battles themselves, the results, it was just lovely. So lovely, that we have agreed to do this at least once monthly, maybe even twice. We shouldn’t do it too often, due to said ratings dropping hard, but it is definitely something to do reasonably often.

We started at 8pm GMT. Between 10 and 11pm GMT, the PF-members logged off one by one, until only LOCA was left. We moved back to our own TS-server then, and continued on until 2am GMT. I was absolutely knackered the next day, but it was worth it.

My winrate, which had gone down by roughly 0.05% during the event itself, steadily climbed back up after PF had left us alone and me and Chimp entered battles together like normal platoons would. All the while, Chimp had been streaming the games on Twitch, which means random people from all over the world could see what we were doing. Not sure if we impressed them though, but we probably made them laugh a lot.

But thanks to that stream, we now have a new member. I’ve dubbed him Hyena, because he has quite a bite, and doesn’t seem to take much seriously. Which is perfect, and makes him fit right into LOCA. He even calls me names (but reduces the effects by apologising for it right after, lol). Talks with him on TS have been very interesting, to say the least. Only platooned with him once. He’s decent, if a bit too eager. We killed Badger, which was fun, even though our team got absolutely slaughtered (Badger was the only enemy to die, lol).

Since the Event (which was last friday), I’ve met a few PF players in battle. Of course, I start the match by calling out “For LOCA” to everyone in the match. Once, I got back “For Polish Force”, followed by “For ICA!”. That was just absolutely lovely, and exactly why LOCA has made this alliance with PF.

I’m looking forwards to our next Clan Event already, though I do hope to get my ratings up a lot before then, so it won’t hurt as much to see them drop again. But even if they do, it was worth it. The kind of fun we had that night is the whole reason I play this game as much as I do. It’s all fun and games, and it should be fun and games always. It was a very good reminder of how much fun this game can be, and of how many great people are on Blitz.

Battles fought: 5,085
Winrate: 60.94%
Average damage: 1,381