Howling Rain

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  • Full Name: Howling Rain
  • Short Name: HR
  • Public IRC Channel: #HR
  • Alliance motto: The pack that howls together, stays together
  • Affectionate nickname:
http://images.easyart.com/i/prints/rw/sm/8/4/Howling-Wolf-Art-Wolfe-8469.jpg

Round 2: The Struggle for Power

HR didn't exist for most of this round, with practically all our members being apart of -=42=- under the command of Zyth/Earthwalker. Zyth left due to -=42=- agreeing to become part of ICD (with B8S, K9) and Earthwalker was starting to become inactive. He promoted SethMace to HC (council consisted also of Willow, Landor, DrEggs & Chino), where Seth began work on making ideas for -=42=-s structure and organisation.

-=42=- Went downhill and Earthwalker had become very inactive. HC had an important meeting which allowed Seth to put across his ideas. All HC rejected them and his attention swayed from -=42=- due to HC's lack of "forward" motion.

ICD had by this time introduced Squads in preparation for "Round 3" and SM took it on to create an elite -=42=- wing, using the same principles he wanted to employ to the whole of -=42=- (as a test). Members such as Cartman, miro, iPad, diesel, Wild9 &Turbo Nutter, were some of the first members in the squad.

The squad was to be called "Howling Rain" :)

Forum was created and rules were in place & IRC looked busy (considering HR were no bigger then 15 members!)... they looked forward to the next round.

Round 3: The New Dawn

It was becoming apparent that ICD were severely hampered by Virii's inactiveness. Some long-term members were plotting to overthrow ICD command & HR certainly weren't happy with some of the other Squads activeness.

HR left ICD and for a short while went it alone but they still needed the shelter of a bigger alliance.

Zyth, an old -=42=- friend and member of Seths TFC clan, invited HR into Sedition, were things at the beginning looked superb. IRC was very active in all of the Sed Wings (hehe, shame we didn't know half of them were spies;( ) and there were attacks often.

Due to Sedition being overrun with spies and the main Sed galaxies being targeted by VtS & Fury, Sed collapsed, again leaving HR without an alliance. One good thing from this situation, was Zyth was recruited into HR, with his many contacts and vast experience, would prove to help HR in recruitment and organisation.

HR by this time was growing in size and had created some good solid foundations (New HC Promotions for Zyth, Buster, Jabz, Cartman, Avatar, iPad, gC (a.k.a Gricey), S_E_T_H [ a different seth:) ] & Redeemer)

Genesis II (aka G-II) was the last "good" alliance of Round3, who had the size to make a stand & unite with others against the bigger alliances.

Planetarion had by this time become practically a professional sport, with the best players spending countless, un-sociable hours increasing their score.

GII leader Dukez had impressed Seth, he was confident and seemed very in control of his alliance, HR join G2 as a wing. HR membership was increasing under the protection of G-II and with their own wing channel, were able to build up a strong community spirit (which to this day still stands strong).

Fury, Legion & ReBorn had become a problem for every alliance and it was decided G2 would be the first to do something about it. HR worked closely with G2 on this and had also approached other alliances like ICD, asking them to aid our stand. Most alliances actually declared war on the Big3, with G2 being one of the final alliances to commit themselves.

Making a raid on the biggest Fury galaxy (who happened to have a HR member in), the G2 raid was a disaster. Spies had infiltrated the attack channel & were feeding false information to it, causing most people to eventually pull, even though victory would have been claimed if they didn't pull.

A 2nd attempt was organised, this time G2 HC were useless and HR officers had to step in on short notice, to try and help the situation go as smoothly as possible. This had frustrated HR and the newly in placed HC were wanting to leave G2. The attack failed for similar reasons as the first, which showed us G2 was insecure and could not be relied on.

HR HC decide to make Howling Rain into a fully fledged alliance, so if anything goes wrong, only we can be blamed for it. Preparations and contacts are pulled in from everywhere, as we remove our membership limit and refine structure & communication methods (New Private Forum & IRC Channel Network expanded).

It was around this time, HR brought in alliances such as TOA (who were lead by Aryn) and SH (who were lead by Exode), this increased our membership from between 10-20 actives, not to mention the good individual players it brought us.

Round 4: The Tides of War

Round 4 is seen by many, as HRs best effort yet to become a big alliance player. Recruitment of players was happening quickly. 50, then 70 and before we knew it we had over 100 members and activity was great.

It was in HRs early development that many of the still used rules & regulations were brought in (we were the first alliance to stop members joining our public channel - well apart from HC & officers:) ).

A player named Fubber(who later became HC) was recruited by Zyth, fubber was one of the best recruitments HR made over this period. He had been developing a website for us (he was highly skilled) and had also brought many good, active players into HR.

Our website was one of the best in PA at this time & with our irc bot Wolfy (developed by gC), we had good technology at ours fingers:).

HR grew even further, eventually totaling over 300 Members on our site. HC felt it was time for HRs name to be known, so a few "events" were held to increase publicity for us.

The infamous [Woof] channel walk was one of the highlights, with 70 HRs joining the major alliances channels spamming "Woof", it was very organised and did great for member motivation. We capped the night off with a retaliation on a large Legion galaxy, which was mildly successful but did achieve its main objective (to stop it hitting HRs gals in-para).

Round 4 showed HC main things about how an alliance should & should not be run, our recruitment was tightened and we started to look further into increasing activity and improving structure but for many it was too late.

We lost many members around this stage & many were inactive (this was the time of the mass kicking's of 100-150 members). We started to find a few intelligence holes which were sealed & things weren't going as smoothly as we hoped.

Fubber had by this time developed a new website but didn't have the time to work on it, also the server he was using was unstable & kept crashing.

Forcing Seths hand, many people were demoted and a few new promotions made (Linny & Jabz became HC).

Looking into re-organising HR, searching for a new website & looking into extending certain alliance relations, the end of Round 4 was approaching.

Negotiations with UV, ICD, YHQ and hirr had failed, with ICD, YHQ & hirr going off with their own ideas (eventually forming Patience [P]), the proposed alliance of Harmony, seemed never to be.

At this time, Seth for various reasons had become inactive for around 2/3 weeks. HC kept things running but members left and things weren't looking too good for HR and Round 5.

Seth very kindly returned:) and the HC began to get the ball rolling again.

Relations with UV were re-established, HC started to check out Alliance Hosting and the "Wolverine" system was introduced by Seth, to increase member participation in the daily running of HR.

With the new Wolverines In Place and HRs new Alliance Hosting Website up & running, some organisation & communication was finally implemented into HR.

Round 4 had ended and talks with UV & BD were well underway into the forming of an alliance. At first a private server would be used, however HR did not go for this idea and offered a channel on PA IRC, as the main member meeting place (this channel was once the Galaxy channel for a Big HR Gal).

DUH was formed just in time for Round 5.

Round 5: The Price for Freedom

Round 5 continued off from where Round 4 had ended, running very smoothly.

IRC channels had been set up between DUH members, the fundamental rules had been laid down and the members from each alliance were becoming very friendly with each other.

The round started the beginning of October, things went well as HR started recruiting old members and IRC activity was looking superb.

Yet again, Seth became inactive for 2/3weeks due to a serious illness. Over this time a 3rd fall from grace occurred, with many members seeming to loose patience and leave/become inactive.

On Seths return, things were acted upon instantly to regain some sort of activeness, this was achieved in 2days of work and a word of thanx must go out to the likes if Ilh and Behemoth who had kept the boat afloat, while their leader was away (click here to read a NewsUpdate from around that time).

The Wolverines were shuffled about, with new promotions and demotions being made and more emphasis being placed on a wide scale leadership system, rather then a 1 man-show.

DUH had yet to become operational, due to lack of defence needed in the early round stages, but around this stage, had decided to pick up planet tagging. DUH became ranked in the top10 planetarion planet tags (and when galaxy tagging begun, [DUH] reached 7th on the sandman galaxy rankings).

Slowly beginning to increase membership again, HR recruited & recruited through HR members (although recruitment was greatly hampered by the reduction in player numbers, caused by pay2play), credit must be given to the DUH galaxy attacks, allowing HR to attack in larger numbers.

Things had settled down comfortably and like every round, HR had many members in top flight galaxies (although getting them to tag was another thing;)). Unfortunately, a huge stalemate between the major alliances had surfaced, with each good alliance, seemingly unable to attack anyone due to naps.

This created for most players, one of the most boring rounds in PA history, in fact wars between these big alliances only broke-out in the last few weeks of the round, when this finally happened everyone applauded. Unfortunately DUH had to remain neutral due to, too many conflicting galaxies on both sides of the war.

DUH's nightly attacks continued and were mainly being organised & planned by HR members (likes of Bloodthirster), this resulted in the creation of a New Wolverine Division - Extreme. [HR-X] were to fully prepare attacks for HR/DUH with scans and good organisation.

Even though too many nice targets were forbidden (due to DUH's neutral stance in the war), HR-X managed to choose plenty of good targets, considering there was a blatant lack of them around, again credit must go to HR members like Bloodthirster, Ardeaus, Roady, 2Pac, BigKev & Ivo, who assisted this greatly on many occasions.

As the round grew closer to the end, DUH just before Christmas, were informed by UV of their departure from the DUH triad. This came as a shock to HR & BD (not to mention some UV HC), we felt let down by UV but acted instantly (well, under the circumstances of Xmas in like 2days) in searching for a replacement alliance.

UV eventually decided to reject the merger with KoN over a management dispute, in turn wanting to rejoin DUH. DUH HC discussed this heavily and decided to accept UV back but to search for a 4th alliance, to strengthen the alliance.

The Wolverines were at this stage, starting to really get the HR Pack "Running Swiftly on all Paws". With common goals & determination, HR HC finally had a body of people, organised and willing to help HR in the 4 main areas, which had been outlined a full round before.

Havos period had arrived and DUH were planning for next round, unfortunately HR Command were getting tired of UV's input into DUH. Their HC activity was low and it was becoming apparent to us, they were becoming more tied to NoS as the days went on.

Discussions were created, in turn deciding HR would part company with UV for Round 6, this was announced at the very final DUH meeting and also saw the views of BD on this subject, with them agreeing with HR.

HR and BD finished the round well together and planned to move into the next round, with a 3rd ally. ROCK, Silver & BluePhnx were all in the running for possible allies/ naps.

Round 6: First Encounters

Round 6 was a return to form after the dismal Round 5, the major powerblocks fought to the death, leaving the rest of the PA Universe largely un-touched. HR went into Round6 more promising then she had ever done, at the start of a new campaign.

One reason in particular aided this - ICD merged most of its remaining core memberbase into our ranks. Giving us a well needed activity boost and bringing along with it some great experience & knowledge.

It was a strange event, not just to see some old familiar faces but for the fact HR had started out as an ICD wing!

HR and BD had in the meantime searched for a third companion but could not find one that was of good enough standard.

The political overview was very one sided for Round6, with basically every major alliance fighting against the usual Furgion domination. The newly named HyB partnership of HR and BD would have a good round regarding galaxy & sandman rankings. Although never officially declaring our allegiance, we were very much anti-furgion and had napped with WP, NoS & CeLL, with a very unofficial agreement with Xan.

Unfortunately this agreement was only with HR and caused many problems, politically for HyB galaxies (specifically the BD ones).

HyB attacks were very limited when compared to the teamwork of the previous round but when they did happen they were very successful. HR attacked alone this round, as activity was usually good enough to not need assistance with coverage but that didn't mean we couldn't coordinate with BD on clusters:)

This round saw Linny & Ilh stepping down from their HC positions and with Kev and Bloodthirster stepping in!

It was a big round for Command shuffles, each of the Wolverine divisions were expanded and improved. The ICD influx also, as mentioned previously - gave us some great members to work with. We had Chaos switching from his original HR-X position, to join Nano and gC in the newly formed HR-S division (techys). Our recruiting wing Paws was also founded to increase our memberbase.

Approaching the end of Round6, we were looking for another ally to complete the triad but it wasn't looking good.

14th March 02 was the exact day [NoS]Wipeout first approached HR over extending our NoS relationship and basically going to bed - By Winging:). Wing status is of course nothing new for HR, while technically we have only ever been a Battlegroup, there isn't much difference to being a Wing.

This was a huge decision and at the time there was also talk of Silver (who were going to fold), of joining our ranks just as ICD did. Blood, Fush, Kev and Seth were worried with HRs identity, how could it survive by giving away direct control of who we fight against/ for and without our command having the final say? Not to mention ditching our long standing allies BD (who we had also approached regarding winging with us).

By the 3rd April is was unlikely HR would be a NoS wing, the HC wasn't happy with a few uncertainties and we didn't like some of the restrictions. However a second meeting with Wipeout and Dingo (on the 8th April), totally turned around the situation. We had pushed BD into the direction of Xylem, hoping they wouldn't be left alone if we did move with NoS.

16th-17April 02 was when HR officially agreed to join NoS as a wing - Fush and Seth would represent HR to the rest of the NoS command. Round7 preparation on HRs part was rushed, due to such a large amount of effort put into HR-NoS discussions.

Round6 went into Havoc and Xylem had also agreed to join NoS as a 4th wing - BD were to receive Vengeance into their ranks for a member boost, aswell as an alliance named OI. During round 7 they were allied with FAnG (they later allied with UV - by the end of Round7 would have merged to form VD).

HR was a fully fledged wing of NoS, there had been a slow transition over to NoS IRC and to their Forums/ Arbiter. HR of course continued to use #fluffyfur as the infamous name for our private channel. We used the Havoc period to show the NoSers, that our command would be a great help (we BCed at every possible chance!) and our memberbase active & friendly:)

Round 7: Critical Diplomacy

HR-NoS was to be allied with Wolfpack, Xanadu and Elysium for this round, a partnership which turned out to be a total disaster on the teamwork part.

While arbiter violations were acceptable, the joint IRC server wasn't of sufficient quality and ment NoS was kept away from some of the joint attacks.

Paws was taken over by Ardeaus who would take it as his own baby and see what new blood he could get HR. We continued to use Alliance Hosting as HRs website and the Wolfy & Fang bots continued to be developed by gC & Chaos. Thrud and Buster were also developing a completely new HR website.

The HR galaxies for this round were organised by Kev and Seth, most of the allied galaxies had already been sorted and as Seth finalised the final members into other spots (Felagund helped greatly). It was apparent we would have too many HRs in some galaxies but at the time there was no other option.

HR Command was having mixed results in their new hunting grounds. The HR-X were fitting in very well with the NoS BCs and Chaos was blowing NoS away with his technical knowledge & Thrud had made HRs very own BCalc!. However, at the time HRs community officers (HR-I) seemed to have stopped and HC itself was having problems (blood with exams and fush for inactivity). HRs recruitment division wasn't active at all, with Kev & Seth having to cover.

Mistwraith was promoted to spearhead the HR-I division and Blood had to leave HR due to RL issues - Chaos was promoted to HC status on the 9th July 02.

A HR community portal was in the making by Seth & Rebel and HR-I were finally organising some solid community events. The first of which was the piloting of the Great HR Woofage!

The end of the round was looming and HR HC were discussing its future, the round with NoS was great and we all learnt a lot but should we stay or move on? We had some clearly sexeh offers from Rock Jnr & vVv who both said they would let us wing into them<- the fact we were bigger then both of them was quite insulting lol (maybe you had to be there;P).

6th September 02 saw HRs long standing HC Kev, stand down due to RL issues, just as the last tick of Round 7s Havoc stopped.

Round 8 preparation was underway, everything was going well until we had a big situation with the organising of the NoS BC team. Wipeout who was to be sorting it out, went MIA so Seth had to step in and do the best he could. Then we had issues with IRC & Anakin (who left to form Adelante - in turn taking lots of old-skool and core NoS members).

Alliance Hosting was also totally deleted, so we were left without a website, we created a HR Announcements forum on the NoS forum.

Paws, our recruiting wing was closed on the 23rd September 02, due to a lack of manpower and for the fact Anoubis could be used more effectively - Illuminati and Howling Rain would pool their new recruits there, until they made the grade for promotion.

17th October saw the HC promotion of Mistwraith, just before the start of the next round and after the whole of PA seemed to be flaming NoS off on the forums - we laughed away the flames (mainly from our "allies" Xanadu who had folded with a bitter taste- end of Round 7 also saw the end of Legion).

Round 8: The Final Legacy

This was to be the final round of Planetarion - a legacy which span over 2years and many nights of laughter for us wolves:(.

In resilience to the stagnating rounds caused by Blocking, HR-NoS stood proud and alone against the rest of the Universe. Not even napping, we attacked and we defended by ourselves.

However, it would turn out the biggest problem for NoS was not the blocking but infact Battlegroups containing mixed Alliance planets. These BGs were sucking away our attack strength and in some cases costing us good membership.

Once again we were the first alliance to make a stand against a big negative for the Alliances in PA and demanded all members leave their BG & give 100% dedication to HR-NoS. The main aggravator of this decision on HRs part, was the fact that HR HC Fush left PA because of a Plush (a battlegroup) related issue. This was the last straw in weeks of damaging BG activity.

HR received some welcomed cheer in the form of another Great HR Woofage and roundly Oscars from Shrike, Misty and Crazybob.

With all the problems HR-NoS faced in Round8, defence was usually unbeatable. Many members shed tears at the amazing response and brotherhood which was shown.. this is something HR has always enjoyed and it was good to see it didn't change with NoS.

Unfortunately, Round8 was cut short as the servers hosts pulled the plug early on the Creators and left us all without a game to login to. A bitter finish but it wasn't to be the final end...

..while HR-NoS command discussed our future, trying to keep our members content while finding a suitable PA replacement - it returned. Hosted by Jolt, pa would be back and so would the planetarion Wing-Alliance of HR-NoS.

However, other's weren't so fortunate, alliances like Fury and Titans would not be. Although a lot of their members would flow into some new alliances, Olympians and Eclipse being the new big boys. Both with many Fury & Legion inside, plus at their core some of the strong Battle-Groups from the last round.

Pre-Round Preparations were well underway, HR-NoS did not want a repeat of last round's rush, so we organised our BC Team and mixed our Galaxies with our allies properly.

VoM were the first block to be announced, consisting of ViruS, Olympians and Mad-Cows - VoM caused a ripple effect across the major alliances, worried of being dominated by this huge opponent. NoS weren't the only alliance to vent their anger at the stirring of another Power Block round... however it was unavoidable.

Political discussions were well underway 3weeks before signups. A number of alliances ended up not being allied to NoS for Round9, although it was anticipated it would happen originally. One of these alliances was WolfPack who joined a triad with Eclipse and Elysium.

NoS were to ally with New Dawn, hirr, RaH and ETY (A Wing of ND).

Round 9: Redemption

The most promising round for HR since joining NoS as a wing, although politically speaking we were apart of the weakest block on paper, our memberbase had many quality players and our Command team were organised and prepared fully. Our block tried its best to mix galaxies, in turn increasing galaxy control and spreading defence requirements across the whole block. However, many NoS members were in galaxies containing WP and RaH had many in Eclipse galaxies.

With the start of the round underway, the usual rush of intelligence feedback began and NARH (NoS, Auld, RaH, hirr) started compiling Intel for military coordination. Our goals from the start were to attack VOMM (Vision, Virus, Olympians, Madcows, [[Ministry], i, ToT) galaxies. Which there was much uproar from Vommit members, as WEET (WP, Ely, Eclipse, ToT) were also targeting them, impressions were that Vommit contained the most members by far. Weet were very much underrated in size and as the inevitable happened and Vommit fell, HR-NoS and our allies were faced with a block who were three times larger.

One really big negative to come out of round9, was the amount of Dosing our private IRC server sustained. Many times nos galaxies received incoming, only to have our irc kicked from under our feet and cause defence communication problems. Chaos the HR-NoS Techy and WE, had to adjust the server setup to reduce this problem and this worked effectively.

There was a lot of background whispering around Round9s political curtains, while something's did not come to pass, HR-NoS's round did not finish as planned but was still good fun!

Round 9 came to an end early, with signs of Eclipse and ToT's domination pushing forward stagnation. The creators cut it short and announced a new, totally free round of planetarion - Round 9.5. Aiming to attract new blood into the small community and allow a more casual round for everybody, with the revamped Round 10 just around the corner.

Practically every major alliance went into Round 9.5 without any alliances, naps and more importantly - No Blocks.

Round 9.5: Resurrection

A strange round, one that was given little respect but ended up being quite a fun round. It was random and free, there were no signs of blocks or any major alliances. A lot of freedom to attack who you wanted, ensured an open battlefield.

However cheating was undertaken by a lot of big names and this was a round which LDK ended up dominating.

As this round wasn't taken as serious as previous ones, a lot of alliances used this to test out certain ideas. HR was at the front of this tactic and we implemented a totally new attack system for our wing. Attack Packs would allow members to attack with others of similar Launch time Preference and activity.

While it wasn't perfect, it did achieve its goal fully in improving HRs attack effectiveness by taking on certain elements of Battle Groups.

HRs attack organisation wasn't the only big change, at the end of the round we would go on to announce our planned departure from NoS. Having fought proudly with NoS since the end of Round 6 and made some great friends. The Wolf once more headed for the hills.. alone.

This split did not occur without some bloodshed, as a few members from both alliances decided to go with the other side. The split was loving done from a Command point of view though.

Round 10: Genesis

A brand spanking new PA game engine, a fresh Howling Rain with new technology and a great influx of eager members from ETY. Yer, you could say we were looking forward to Round X:). After a long history, Entity (headed by Prometheus and Korenchkin) decided to merge most of ETY into HR.

ETY were an alliance very similar to HR, in that they were defiantly proud of their alliance community and both parties found the merger pretty smooth. It's safe to say, no other alliance in the History of Planetarion, could compete with HRs experience in dealing with such situations.

Things looked set for PAX as the round got under way, but things would soon change. Korenchkin, who was drafted in to head up the HR-I division, decided that he just couldn't muster up the will to play PA anymore, and left us before even signing up to the game. Two months later, Prometheus who came from ETY and joined the Military Council announced the same thing. The new technology was still not done, and things were moving slowly.

At this point, Chaos became inactive, as work and his newborn son took more of his time, resulting in all development on things like Arbiter, Attack system and IRC services being put on hold, leaving HR with only beta versions or in many cases no version at all of the vital tech needed.

Not soon after, SethMace was suddenly left without internet access from home, and only sporadic access from his university. With Prometheus leaving and ilh slipping steadily into inactivity, the role as Military Council became more a role of Military Commander, and it was a task Henck (aka Kamikazze) was more than capable of taking on.

While HR limped to try and recover from these blows, the universe was at war. FAnG and Dragons slightly on top. In the last days of the round, a FAnG HC managed to post his login details in a public channel, and soon after almost half of FAnG found themselves kicked from the ingame alliance. If this was his doing, or someone abusing his planets access after he posted his details noone will know, but in the end it resulted in Elysium stealing the victory.

Round 10.5: The Awakening

PAX.5 came around fast, and caught HR mostly by surprise. With Mistwraith the only active HC, too much had to be done, and too little time was left to do it in and the round started with more chaos than order in HR.

A crippled HC and a dwindling memberbase, HR still managed to hold our own in the start of the round, but as the round got underway, the various powerblocks were getting to us. Being neutral has more downs than ups, and we soon saw activity slump as members were faced with ever higher odds. The officers did their best to keep things afloat and we managed to cover many incommings, only suffering during the late night when we simply didn't have enough people online.

At this time, Misty was approached by ]LCH[ with suggestions of a merger for this round only. Both our alliances were struggling, and we were both small enough that we would manage to fit our members into the 100 member limit in the game. After some time discussing it with the command team, the merger was a fact, and FYTFO was formed. Right at this time, Epcylon was promoted to HC to reduce the workload on Misty.

The new partnership brought new activity to both HR and LCH and defence was again virtually unlimited. Since LCH already had taken sides in the war, HR entered the war on their side, against FAnG, Phraktos and Mistu (FPM). By this time, FPM had too much of a gap for anyone to really be able to stop them, but FYTFO refused to roll over and die. For the remainder of the round, we defended nearly all reported incs on our members, often against staggering odds.

Towards the end, Phraktos broke with FAnG and Mistu, but it was too little too late, and their HC immediately broke down, leading to one of the most spectacular collapses in PA history. Phraktos went from #2 spot to #15 in 2 days, losing most of their members.

By the time of the Phraktos collapse, SethMace was back and Chaos started appearing on IRC with something resembling regularity again, although he still had much RL commitments to take care of. Suddenly HR had four semi-active HC instead of only Misty at the start of the round. With HC activity returning, new initiatives in order to spark interest in R11, FYTFO managed a decent #6 rank, with several top 15 gals flying the HR banner.

Chaos's immense workload was shifted towards Freedom, who had already developed a basic Arbiter for HR but through HC instructions, was to implement this further with features designed by Seth 3 rounds ago. At this time, Epcylon announced that with Sethy and Chaos returning, he would have to step down from his newly gained HC position in order to take care of the master thesis he had allowed to gather dust for a year, and a new gf.

With Round10.5 fast becoming a distant memory, HR was left with a medium sized memberbase and the instant option to carry on as a dual entity with LCH or to once again go it alone. Due to the ingame 100 member limit, HC were reluctant to stagnant any possible future recruitment (and inturn prevent HR from regaining full strength). So HR parted ways with LCH who had helped them in so many ways over the round, (many thanks must go to players like Acers, Nitros, Remy and Zmeu).

An energetic recruitment frenzy began straight away (Click Here for an Example), Exode & Seth started work on enticing back many of HRs past-greats and before we knew it, 80 members were signed-up waiting for Round11 to start. With the brand new arbiter already online and accepting applications from members, R11 was being hyped as the round HR would achieve its greatest ingame success. Due to the semi-return of Fury (in the form of 1up), blocking en'mass was largely prevented. Thus Command were confident the arena was set for HR to wrong all our doubters (most predicting a #10 ranking, if that, finish for HR) and produce our best round to date...

.. Then as with all pre-round excitement, a hint of negativity would hinder our progress. Freedom's arbiter was not complete and due to RL issues, would not be ready for the new round.

Round 11: A Legend Reborn

Even without the new Arbiter by Freedom, HR started well. While pre-round recruitment was just the ticket to boost HRs size, the two weeks prior to start had degraded our size with inactivity and we started with 60 members. 10th and proud, HR began its Round11 campaign with hunger.

Something that was clear from the first few days, our Attacks were lacking and so Zo0f was semi-promoted as an advisor to MC. Together, Henck & Zo0f would revolutionise HR attacks and in turn boost our growth that would gradually set our path to the higher reaches of the Universe.

1up had recruited/ poached many of the 1337 from established alliances, WolfPack being the alliance seemingly hurt the most by this. This and the fact that 1up had brought back from hibernation many of the old-skool Fury Battlegroups, ensured they would be strong contenders for #1. After winning R10.5, FAnG were seen as 1ups main threat and thus, after 2/3 weeks of war, FaNG surprisingly & worryingly collapsed under the pressure of the new Universal Power. With 1up out growing all competition, first signs of alliance cooperation between LCH, VisioN & Mistu emerged (the highest challengers for #1).

Command activity was greatly improved for R11, HR had by far its most active BC team and its quality of members was also higher then ever before. However, HC activity was still an issue with Chaos's RL once again conflicting with his activity and Misty for most of the round having to work long days.

After consistent targeting of WolfPack & ROCK Strongholds, HR had climbed to rank 6th. With NewDawn in 5th and ahead by 20million and Mistu in 4th ahead by 60million but with HRs growth being faster, the race was on. By this point, Zo0f had stepped down from his Attack Advisor position and Henck had also informed HC of his upcoming holiday. Hence, Jirikai and Teddy_Bear were promoted to the Military Council and would see out the rest of the round with Seth by motivating and organising HR military.

After a brief seat at the top of the Universal Rankings, LCH were knocked from #1 by 1up who had seen off all incomings from the un-official block of LCH, VsN & Mistu. LCHs previous #1 ranking had also been pivotal for the rounds politics, as this un-intentionally dissolved the Blocks determination to destroy 1up. Each member of the block now looked down instead of up for their targets and this was highlighted best by LCH's attempt to out-roid 1up, by hitting lower ranked alliances. With alliances like ND avoiding 1up planets and also many of the top100 planets being gal-napped to 1up, the fate of the winning alliance was set; 1up would dominate from this point onwards.

Intelligence was important for HR now, they needed to know the best galaxies to hit based on ND concentrated planets and thanks to Rebels HC Intell Arbiter, HR had a useful technology to aid the war effort. With each passing night, ND's growth was slowing and HRs was increasing. However, HR wasn't just eyeing up 5th at this point, as Mistu (having had planets deleted for cheating) were no longer so far away; 4th was becoming a very attainable achievement.

With 2/3 weeks remaining, 1up had become double the size of the #2 ranked alliance LCH. HR were ranked 5th and were only a few million behind Mistu. With ND now dropping behind, HR turned its attention to Mistu planets and once again, our attack strategy and activity was superb, closing the gap as each day passed.

Around this time, gC & Neon had taken on the task of producing a New HR Arbiter for the next round. One that would be worthy of the HR name and automate so many of the systems that have traditionally been done by hand. The team were determined to get HR the arbiter its always deserved but more importantly, get it finished in time for Round12. Linking irc systems to the web arbiter, this new arbiter was lining up to be the Best in Planetarion.

The final week or so was a stressful time indeed. Not only were HR receiving incomings from both ND & Mistu but random waving of our biggest planets from 1up. Much praise must go to our night owl DC team, the likes of Mortis, Jirikai, Xain, Apoc, Teddy, Hume and Henck (as well as officers such as Rebel, WwW, Exode, Neon and even Misty & Seth!).

Teddy_Bear (who had been preparing attacks with Cara, Goxx & Seth since Henck stepped down) was having RL issues and this in turn was hindering his activity. With help from Grebe, Mistwraith, Rebel, Apoc and Henck (once he had returned), Seth made sure HRs military focus kept in line and depending on Uni rankings, would target ND or Mistu.

The final week was a battle to the end, infact it was the only real battle for ranking in the top10. It was a war on all fronts, even the recruitment one with each alliance recruiting anywhere they could, just to add 1 or 2million to their overall score.

After the Final Night, HR kept all fleets home for defence and made sure no members would suicide their fleets. With the rise of the sun came HRs rank of 4th Place by 9million - End of right? We wish! With only a few hours remaining and new Mistu recruitment, (alongside 2 HR members leaving our ranks ingame) cost us enough to drop behind Mistu by only a few 100k. The final hours were tense but thanks to two new recruits whose 72hour wait was over, we got back the rank we had worked so hard to achieve. You can view a final universe ranking of the last day Here.

With our pre-Round11 Goal fully met, every HR member could be proud of the hard work they had put in and be confident that Round12 would only increase our success.

To be completed....

Round 12: The Edge of Darkness

Sethy has been real lazy getting this one complete.

- Ill just paste what ive written so far:D


With HRs success of Round 11 we knew that to match or better our 4th Rank would be that much more difficult. The element of surprise would be lost, alliances like ND & MISTU would not underestimate HR for fear of loosing rank to us again. Not only this but from an internal point of view, our members were of higher quality and so expected a better "service" from their alliance. It's human nature to want to better ones achievements, for Wolves the hunger is off the scale!

One issue HC were well aware of, was we wanted to really push attack organisation this round and this was something we feel we improved upon, however there were a few unforeseen defence issues. After the second week we lost one of our most important night owl DCs, Jirikai. Due to RL issues he was unable to maintain activity and the loss of him pushed a huge weight on the other DCs, it was a loss that we found hard to replace.

Politically, R12 was close to a carbon copy of Round 11 and many alliances continued the trend of "trying" to go solo. From the off HR was top3 behind LCH & MISTU (who had the added strength of the Angels BG), previous winner 1up had vowed to recruit no more then 60 players ingame and so their Univeral Rank was low to start, causing many alliances to overlook them and their public campaign of King Maker.

Externally for HR, there were 2 Key Moments in Round12, the first being ND joining forces with NoS & ToF to attack HR - Knocking us down to 4th rank behind ND. Previous to this, HR had been targetting ND and because ND were unable to handle our force alone, they persuaded others to aid their side. Ironically, had they planned it for any other night after this, they would have seen HR changing target to MISTU (as we were satisfied with NDs size below us) but with NDs dirty tactics, war had begun. For the first time in our history, we would witness underhand tactics (such as spamming our def bot, fake recall messages, impersonating HC) and a strong public campaign against us.

1up were very much pulling strings from day one and towards HR, both 1up & ND would play various propaganda games, most notably wrongly accusing HR & LCH of allying. However, HRs military campaign was flooding ND and from the 2nd day of war onwards, HR received little ND incomings, as most of their resources were spent defending against HR attacks. Insomnia played an important role over this period, as they would fight with HR against ND/NoS galaxies.

However, the war had stagnated both HR & NoS, mainly due to MISTU sneaking in after hours when our resources were low. ND approached HR and requested a cease fire to reclaim our lost roids and after discussing for a few days (giving enough time for HR to overtake ND in rankings;)), we agreed.

Unfortunately for MISTU, 1up & LCH had taken a fancy to their fat size and over the period of a few days of mass incomings, MISTU's round was over (not helped by the Angels leaving). By this point, 1up were looking big with the biggest average planet size although still ranking below the top3 (1st LCH, 2nd HR, 3rd ND).

The second key moment involved the bluffing of many alliances who had been neutral to the conflicts of the top5.

By mid round, 1up & LCH were firmly at war and from our point of view, it was a well balanced fight akin to HR & ND. Problems started to arrise when 1up began to recruit other alliances to their cause, with those alliances believing much of the false propaganda of an "enemy" block. With ND, ToF & Sin, 1up expanded their attack coverage.

      • UNDER CONSTRUCTION***