Power Gems was a top 50 team in bracket one that fell apart. Even worse, after falling apart, the guild was held hostage for 46 days by an inactive GM and lost most of it’s members. Once control was regained, Power Gems joined TUF (The Unholy Family) and completely rebuild in about 3 weeks. This is the saga of them returning to bracket 1.
All that time without GM control, the guild dropped brackets every week, falling from bracket 1 to bracket 18 before the rebuilding began.
Week 1: With less than half a guild, TUF: Power Gems won 1 GW battle and placed second to last in bracket 18. This meant the guild only dropped 1 bracket instead of 2.
Week 2, Bracket 19: With 24 players TUF: Power Gems won bracket 19 by over 200K and won all 6 GW battles, a streak of 6.
Week 3, Bracket 17: With the guild now full, TUF: Power Gems won bracket 17 by almost 500K and won 6 GW battles, a streak of 12. The margin of victory was generally 2:1. There were some losses here and there, but things went smoothly. If anyone wonders about collusion between the two TUF guilds, we fortunately didn’t have to face each other.
Week 4, Bracket 15 Power gems won the bracket by over 600K points and won 6 nights, a streak of 18. We continue to win by larger margins as we rise to more difficult brackets. Clearly that’s not a sustainable trend and will reverse soon. On individual wars, we continue to outscore opponents by 2 to 1 or greater.
Note: Because of my own personal schedule, I’ll generally be taking screenshots about 4-5 hours before weekly reset for this case study. I doubt the numbers will change appreciably in that time.
For the rest of you. Any theories on which bracket Power Gems will start to encounter a challenge? What bracket will break the win every night streak? Anyone have a feel for relative challenge across brackets? I’m guessing bracket 7 will start the challenge, definitely by bracket 3.
Week 5: Bracket 13 Power Gems won by over 500K, a bit down from last week. It seems to be the result of opposing teams doing better. We beat Ultra Marines by less than double, one of the more challenging opponents so far. We won all 6 nights for a streak of 24.
I find this thread particularly interesting as we are in a situation quite similar with Light Army.
They have been through some difficult times. Most of their members have left or become inactive. So they had fallen a lot.
Thanks to the addition of some members of Intouchables, who have merged with our alliance of guilds, they have won bracket 16 with a very comfortable gap last week.
And they will be at last 30 again to play in bracket 14 this week.
Congrats for the great job you have done to save Power Gems. It is sad to see so many guilds falling apart currently.
I will follow the progression of Power Gems closely and hope Light Army will meet them in a higher bracket in a few weeks.
If your guys have the time, maybe you could find a volunteer in Light Army to post their screen shots too. Then with 2 guilds in similar circumstances we can get a more complete picture for the case study. I would expect your GW expertise in Anonymous would give them a huge advantage.
Unfortunately I forgot to take some SS before the reset.
LA has been down to 13-15 members the first half of December, so they have fallen to bracket 16 last week.
The only SS I have was at the end of the 3rd day. They already had a comfortable lead…
Now we need to get in touch with those who communicate little or not at all and teach them to use 24 troops in defense and how to build a monocolour team.
Purple day against Ultra Marines will surely be interesting as both guilds have been competing for months for rank 13 in the LB in 2017.
Week 6: Bracket 11 Power Gems won by almost 400k with 1.43 million points. We won all 6 wars to continue the streak of 30 GW battle wins. At this bracket, we saw more formidable teams with 800-900K being a normal GW score. Are win margins are no longer double on most days. Things are still not to hard, but we can see the competition heating up.
Any update on Light Army @Aelthwyn ? We also faced Ultra-marines back on bracket 13. They did the best out of teams at that level.
Yes!
It has been the first week that Light Army was playing with 30 members for a while.
Bracket 14 is still quite relaxed. And the victory against Ultra Marines has been sweet.
Bracket 12 next week… I hope that it will be as easy…
But I am afraid we will still be struggling for a while trying to make everyone use 24 troops in defense and monocolour teams!
Bracket 12 shouldn’t be a problem. If you look at the top of 12, your scores should be enough to win it easily. The winner last week was TUF: Purgatory with 1.0 million points and you did 1.2 million. So TUF: Power Gems gives you a preview of your upcoming week.
No @Pbwasher, they went inactive and that’s the reason Power Gems had no GM control over their guild for 46 days before they joined TUF and why Power Gems has such a long climb back to bracket 1. It’s why it’s important to have outside communication channels for admins to prevent such things.
Week 7: We intentionally stayed at 29 players last week to save a spot for a former Power Gem player to return from Intrim. We held our flag at half mass to welcome his return.
Bracket 9 Power Gems won by over 320k with 1.41 million points. We won all 6 wars to continue the streak of 36 GW battle wins. At this bracket, teams were in the 900K-1.1 million range. Win margins are almost never double our opponents.
It seems he has come back home after having visited Intrim and Anonymous. He will be a good asset for the new Power Gems
Light Army was in bracket 12 last week… Things are progressively getting a little more serious. I have encountered a little more difficulties with my crappy low level account. It is high time for me to leave.
However the guild has won very easily all its battles last week again.
Week 8: Back to 30 players. We celebrated the return a Power Gem pretty hard with 32 LTs that ended up getting us a 2nd mythic in 2 weeks. We also added GW specific reqs (30K GW points, Sentinels 3 for brackets 1-3) and the squad stepped it up a bit. We could tell things were getting a little bit more challenging and we’re almost to the top 3 brackets.
Bracket 7 Power Gems won by over 320k with 1.45 million points. We won all 6 wars to continue the streak of 42 GW battle wins. At this bracket, teams were in the 1 million-1.1 million range. Win margins are going down, but still healthy.
Bracket 10 for Light Army. Things have been a little more difficult, with stronger opponents. Light Army has won with a lead of “only” 180K points this time.
A member who didn’t care about GW left. Another who wasn’t making the reqs got kicked. They have been replaced with two soild players. The race for paragon is getting more challenging each week, with now quite a few talented GW players. But there still remain a few people who haven’t understood the defense bonus and are having difficulties. We are still working on attracting everyone on Discord.
This week for Light Army in bracket 8 has been even closer than the previous one.
Now, the 6th bracket should be the beginning of a real challenge especially if we don’t find 2 new recruits until tuesday.
Week 9: Bracket 5 Power Gems won by a close margin. We won all 6 wars to continue the streak of 48 GW battle wins. At this bracket, teams staying in the bracket were in the 1.1 million-1.3 million range. We had a close call with Heroes United, which we beat by less than 10K. I expect to see these formidable warriors again in a higher bracket. This is just a preview of next week where we’ll face other teams of our caliber.
I wonder if there will be a lot of GW outages next week. The flu is really strong right now, at least in the US. It took me 20 minutes just to write my updates because of all the times I had to stop to cough into a trashcan. With the margins of victories so low now, a win or low in a GW battle could come down to who gets sick.
