About

Artillery Only is a catchphrase among fans of the video game Hearts of Iron 4. The game is a strategy game in which players create armies based on certain classes. Going with only artillery units is seen as a disadvantage, thus "Artillery Only" became a challenge among fans of the game, particularly after one of the more popular players of the game encouraged his fans to challenge PewDiePie to attempt it.

Origin

Though the meme began spreading in late August 2018, the challenge had been around prior; on July 26th, YouTuber Count Cristo attempted the challenge (shown below, left). On August 22nd, 2018, YouTuber iSorrowproductions did the challenge as a special for reaching 300,000 subscribers (shown below, right), gaining over 306,000 views. After the video, he told his fans to spam PewDiePie's videos by telling him to do Artillery Only.





Spread

The challenge to PewDiePie led to a movement on YouTube to make it happen and turned "Artillery Only" into a catchphrase for its supporters. On the night of August 24th, 2018, after an Artillery Only recruitment on his official Discord, the YouTuber The Spiffing Brit joined the Artillery Only discord and then later did the artillery only challenge in a livestream on his YouTube channel (shown below, left). On August 25th, the YouTuber Alex The Rambler did the Artillery Only challenge after a wave of artillery only comments in his YouTube channel (shown below, right).

On August 25th, user Ntoacn#6059 made a Hearts Of Iron 4 mod that makes the AI do Artillery Only templates. On August 26th, YouTuber Drew Durnil made a video with the AI of the game playing with artillery only after the wave of "Artillery Only" comments (shown below).





The phrase was used in raids of other YouTubers and eventually PewDiePie's, leading PewDiePie to allegedly message iSorrorproduction asking him to stop (shown below).

On September 1st, Grandayy retweeted a post about Artillery Only (shown below)





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External References