The March 2020 Battle for Atlantis was an extremely intensely fought, close battle. It is fitting that it should be the first battle to gain an entry to the ‘battle reports’ section of the new forums.
As background there was also a launching tournament for players (March Madlantis), set up and run by players. This turned out to merely be a fun opening act to the main event that was the final battle day.
Faceless had secured Atlantis Prime during the first day of the battle phase, establishing an advantage that can often be decisive. Nonetheless Legion, with some launches from Swarm too, set about working down the Faceless Seek ZA zone where no cubes are allowed. Come the final day this zone remained “in play”. In addition all three of the top cube zones were within reach. Each faction had secure control of 5 zones, meaning that the outcome of the battle hinged upon these 4 zones (F SEEK ZA + 3 cube) and that all 3 factions had a chance for victory.
Occasionally players from a faction will make an early push to try to stack a cube zone out of reach of their enemies. This can be an effective tactic but it can also run the risk of eliciting an immediate response and setting off the battle earlier than otherwise would be. An early battle start usually means that the cubing players will have to dig deep and consume more resources (cubes & credits) to stay in the battle. This time around Faceless started their push 1.5 hrs before the end. Legion responded.
Up, back down, and up again went the FLOPPYDRIVE zone where the cubing battle began. At one point Faceless nearly had a half million bots, mostly abs, lattice backed. Legion manned the plasma cannons and took to the task of tearing down what Faceless was actively trying to build. This battle raged for about 1 hour at which point the zone displayed the gray color indicating that all bots had been removed.
Meanwhile Swarm had a fair defense built up in their GUARDSHOT zone that mostly went untouched during this first hour of battle. And the Legion cube zone JBO remained quite low, also seeing little attention at this time.
Around 30 minutes out Legion began their push. Abs went into JBO and in the seeming blink of an eye it was relatively secured at 400-500k bots. FLOPPYDRIVE was next, with a similar Legion push and a similar result. Despite some pressure for the remainder of the battle both of these zones remained in Legion hands through to the end.
Back to the scoreboard: with Legion holding their original 5 + the 2 cube zones they’d just secured their odds of winning had gone up significantly. The best the other factions could hope to do was tie on zone count. But as it the case would be faceless held the primary tie breaker (Atlantis Prime) and Swarm held a secondary tie breaker (more total bots in Atlantis than Legion). So clearly each faction still had a chance.
Now the cubers focused their attention on GUARDSHOT. It didn’t take long for the zone to come down. Legion were first to build up a little stronghold in the zone ~100-200k. At this moment it started to look like the enemy might be backing down. “Don’t celebrate yet” was uttered in chats, and not long after, with less than 10 minutes to go, Faceless brought an onslaught to the zone. They tore down what Legion had built and in it’s place erected a tower of abs amidst an onslaught of plasma fire. This fight went on up to about 1 minute to go, when it was clear Legion would not hold the zone. “Guardshot is lost. It’s all up to Legion now”. The cubers on both sides had done all they could, and it was an epic cube battle, but it did not decide this Atlantis.
Back to F SEEK ZA: Over the final day all three factions scrapped tooth and nail over the only non-cube zone in play. With over 22k launches and 641 zone captures it was the place of focus for most players this day. This continued all the way to the final minute, and into the last decisive seconds. Once all of the cube zones were settled it became clear that the only way for a faceless win was for them to take this zone. A Legion or a Swarm capture of the zone at the end would mean a Legion victory for Atlantis. Right down to the last volley it turned out the Legion launchers and the Legion bots were enough to prevail. Barely. The final margin of victory was a mere 5063 bots, just over half a scope from a single player. An intense finish to a classic battle.
This is just my perspective. I wonder what other players thought about this battle for Atlantis. Is anyone a new player, for whom this was their first taste? Anyone from an opposing faction have a view from their war-room?
