12/06/2019

Alderaan Places

I join an Alderaan Civil War in progress on my Mercenary alt. I don't know why she's the one who ends up having all these adventures as of late; it's not as if I play her particularly often. Just weird luck, I guess.

Anyway, the match has already started, but hasn't been going for long yet, as only one turret has been capped and both scores are still high. I run towards mid the Command Center (!) which is usually where most of the action is and where I can be of most use as a healer.

While we fight, the second side turret gets captured - by the same team, and I notice for the first time that said team is not mine. Not a good start, but at least we should be able to get mid with those odds and then we can take it from there, right?

Nope. We fight, I hit every cooldown I have, but eventually I go down while being nuked by four different opponents.

Seeing that everyone else around me was also already dead or dying and that mid is lost, I head for snow the Generator (?), where I can see some of my team members fighting and it looks like we might stand a better chance of winning. However, I've barely jumped off the landing platform when out of nowhere I have three enemies on me again, and of course all my defensives are still on cooldown. Why are they even here? I'm nowhere near an objective! I die much more quickly this time while the enemy team captures their third turret and the helpful announcer voice calls out that "an enemy is unbeatable". It's gonna be one of those games, isn't it?


Since I'm not interested in throwing myself into the maw of the exact same enemy gang a third time, I try mid again, where the crowd appears to have thinned out a bit. I support the lone Juggernaught there and come agonisingly close to capturing the turret not once, but twice, but enemy reinforcements arrive just in time to prevent it and kill me yet again. At least someone on my team manages to capture grass the Crash Site (?) in the meantime.

I return to mid once more, because after the carnage I was just subjected to it suddenly seems suspiciously empty... but another attempt at the turret gets interrupted by some pebbles coming at me from behind a pillar, and when I see what I've come to think of as "the kill squad" coming around a corner again, I don't think twice and make a run for it towards snow - which my team just managed to capture.

So now we own two turrets... but we're way behind, with our ship on less than 200 health while the enemy's still has more than 500 points left. "Too late, it's all over," a dejected team mate announces in ops chat. "We need three to win and that won't happen." Another agrees, and to be honest so do I... so I decide to attempt to regain at least a bit of my dignity by standing guard at snow.

This time I'm not alone though, and soon several enemies come over from mid to skirmish. They aren't quite so hot when it's not three or four vs. one though. With four of us vs. four of them we manage to at least hold our ground.

"Your ship is nearly lost. Turn the tide, Shadow Squad! Take back the artillery!" the second announcer chimes in as our ship ticks down to less than one hundred health points, when someone... captures... mid?


I take a moment to type "lol" into chat. I don't really dare to hope, but just having made that comeback, even if only briefly, feels worthwhile on its own. I continue to run in circles and heal people... but now I can't take my eyes off the score indicator. The enemy ship's health is ticking down quickly with three turrets firing at it, and it's already almost down to 200. If we can only hold that third turret for another minute, then we'd be back to winning with two!

Eventually I notice the attackers starting to peel off to run towards mid, and I follow to continue the fight there. Ultimately only one of our defenders remains at snow, and she eventually gets killed, losing the node and asking in chat why everybody abandoned her. But by that point the enemy ship is on less than 40 points while ours still has more than 80. Thirty seconds later the warzone is ours.

"That was pretty awesome!" I type in chat.
"Very surprised," concedes the Generator's last defender, who was also the person who'd declared the match a certain loss a few minutes earlier.
"That's a lesson for ya, never give up!" adds the Juggernaut with whom I was fighting at mid earlier, adding a happy smiley face for emphasis.
"Yee-haw us," agrees the second person who had expressed doubt in chat earlier.

I know I've said it before, but this is why you shouldn't quit just because things look bad for your team: If you leave as soon as it looks like a loss, you'll never get to experience those awesome moments when your team unexpectedly manages to turn things around.

1 comment :

  1. GAH!!!!

    I have an earworm from that old 1980 song, and I can't get rid of it.

    But yes, those magical moments make it worthwhile.

    ReplyDelete

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