Spacebunny has a theory that men are always proud of the wrong things. That may be, but in any case, I am EXTREMELY proud of the Alliance’s performance in my first opportunity to act as its Battleground Leader in Alterac. The previous battle, we’d had a BL who didn’t have any grasp on strategy, and although we fought all right there was little sense of purpose and we would up losing by 50 or so. I racked up something like 143 kills and got nipped at the end for the most damage by another hunter, but it was obvious that it was going to be all for naught quite early on.
But today, as soon as I saw that I was BL, I immediately began haranguing everyone and explaining what we needed to to do win. I initially got mixed results, as only one of the nine I’d ordered to Stonehearth actually joined me there but most of the other thirty ignored Snowfall and went straight for Iceblood as I’d demanded. The two of us at Stonehearth got immediately overrun by a group and a half of Horde, of course, but the fact that I’d predicted this – and tore them a new one for stupidly allowing it to happen anyhow – inspired enough fighters to drop the extraneous silliness and take it back before it started pumping out live Horde. The shock of seeing we were actually nominally in the lead after 100 casualties for each side seemed to inspire them further, especially when I began berating by name the four idiots who were wasting their time fighting over Snowfall. The levels seemed pretty even, possibly even to their favor as I only saw two Hordes lower than 58 throughout the entire battle. But we fought very well; one night elf rogue was the absolute MVP, roaming all around the north, well away from the major action in the south, taking out single Hordies that were trying to steal isolated bunkers and towers. The bulk of our forces held onto Iceblood despite the constant onslaught from an increasingly desperate Horde, while the much smaller crew with me at Stonehearth beat back three furious attempts to take the graveyard there, as well as five or six opportunistic attempts on the nearby bunkers and Balinda.
Despite the initial indiscipline, the warband held together amazingly well throughout the endgame, resisting the temptation to go after Galv until we’d taken and burned the two southern towers. Everything went so smoothly and methodically that I only had 8 kills and dealt out insignificant damage despite the fact that we utterly destroyed the cursed Frostwolves, 321-0. That’s a 371-point turnaround in a 600-point game. And yes, I am indeed extremely proud of that.
The moral of the story: strategy matters.