Round 18
Dates and Times
Signups opened on Monday 26th June 2006 at 20:00 GMT.
Ticks began Friday 7th July 2006 at 20:00 GMT.
Ticks ended Friday 1st September 2006 at 20:00 GMT.
Round Summary
Round 18 saw the return of the much vaunted eXilition to the game. With 1up coming off the back of yet another victory in Round 17 it was clear from before the start of the round who the two main alliances would be this round. Other notables on the field of play included Omen, who had finished in second the previous round, Escape, a new alliance this round, a revitalised Subh and xVx. Insomnia had disbanded following Round 17, with a number of their ex-members going to Escape, and TGV had merged into Omen for this round.
The round kicked off in a slightly different fashion to the previous two eXi versus 1up rounds with both alliances galaxy-raiding in order to build up roids. A sort of "phoney war" kicked in and although 1up and eXi were not avoiding each other they weren't fully targeting each other either. During this time eXilition were to prove the superior alliance as they were able to build a small score, and a slightly large roid, lead over 1up, who in turn were trailed by Subh, Omen, xVx and Escape, in order. After nearly 3 weeks of the round the war that everyone had been waiting for kicked off as 1up and eXilition began to strike out full force at each other.
The indications of eXi superiority that had been displayed during the first period of the round were shown to be fairly accurate during this war. eX, already sitting on a roid and value lead, were able to beat 1up down and stretch their lead. 1up had lost some of the edge, particularly in activity and discipline, that had characterised their earlier rounds and this round they were no match for eXilition 1 on 1. Realising the relatively weak state they were in 1up approached a number of different alliances, including Subh, xVx and Omen, regarding targeting eXi. However before this could get off the ground Subh, xVx and Escape joined together to target Omen, largely due to personal reasons (read about it here!) This SEx block hit Omen for two days, causing immense losses both nights before both Subh and xVx dropped out. The war was now between Omen and Escape and Omen quickly asserted their superiority, roiding Escape solidly, on their own, for the next few nights. Although Escape dropped down the rankings from this point on, unlike many other new alliances they were able to finish out the round, albeit with a final ranking outside the top ten alliances.
Another attempt was orchestrated by 1up to take on eXi. Talking to both Subh and xVx, as Omen and Escape were locked in their war and Omen had by this point NAPed eX anyways, they agreed on a plan to hit eXi. Problems emerged for Subh though who, after one night's half-hearted co-operation, failed to organise themselves on the second night and ended up not launching on eX at all. Meanwhile eXi, understanding that 1up would not be easy to force out of a war and that other alliances were much better targets anyways, focused their attention on xVx, who suffered a couple of nights of devastating roid losses, losing nearly 40% of their roids in 48 hours. Utterly frustrated by this breakdown in their attempt to take down eXi 1up announced that they would be switching their targeting to Subh due to the events that had transpired over the last few days.
Now lacking any real opposition eXi proceeded to run away with the round, in the end finishing with nearly twice the score of the eventual second placed alliance, Omen, with 1up coming in third. The top planet ranks were dominated by eXi, who spent the last few weeks of the round roiding and fleetcatching targets as they pleased. The winning planet was Almeida of eXilition, who won by the largest margin of victory since PAX began, and the #1 galaxy was 7.5, which was unsurprisingly an eXi dominated galaxy.
