Last night was pretty incredible.

I commanded for three hours in total - from 7PM BST (as the WvWvW reset dropped) to 10PM BST. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I knew that [RPS] would be able to field decent numbers at reset; we have a pretty strong (and consistent) WvWvW base within our guild now. As always when I command on reset, I opted for the approach of being on the Eternal Battlegrounds (EB) for our inevitable cap of Stonemist Castle (SM) (seriously, Gunnar’s Hold are always the first to get it when the match-ups change) before changing to a different Borderlands. Taking SM gives time for things to die down enough so I can make a clear decision as to where to move my forces without running into a queue.

My fellow [RPS] legionnaires and I gathered up in the great Divinity’s Reach. We were joined there by members of Midnight Mayhem - [MM]. Our two guilds haven’t generally worked together in the past, but even in the human capital we were sharing buffs openly and chatting while waiting for reset.

Little did we know it, the coordination between [RPS] and [MM] would be applied to our fights later in the night.

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

As a server, we planned our strategy over the community Mumble; we would have large numbers going to EB and defending the home soil, but it didn’t seem like we had many people harassing our enemies in their Borderlands. That changed later on, however.

Once everyone sauntered off within Mumble to join their own private channels, [RPS] moved into the (very open) Cross-Borderlands Chat. The main reason for this was because I didn’t have permissions to move some of my guys to the specific channel for EB.

However, using Cross-Borderlands proved to be an advantage, as we were slowly joined by others outside of our guild - with Cry Havoc ([CHvc]) initially accompanying us, followed by Praxium [PRXM] and even [MM] later on in the evening.

Reset rolled round quickly enough and we found ourselves playing against two German servers - Miller’s Sound and Drakkar Lake. This was quite amusing, since we had played against two French servers (Fort Ranik and Arborstone) the week before.

I know that Cara Ellison came under a bit of fire recently when she called WvWvW ’some sort of weird World Cup tournament’ but really - who can blame anyone for thinking that with these match-ups?

EB then.

It was a rush on SM - what else is there to say about it?

I suppose the remarkable thing was that the map hit a queue some 20 seconds after reset - that’s why some character portraits in my party are blacked out; they were simply unable to join in.

We scuffled with the two other servers in the SM Lord’s Room but easily secured the cap.

Yup, it really was as simple as that.

Honest!

OK, maybe ‘scuffled’ is a…

…little…

…bit…

…of…

…an…

…understatement!

It took us a good 10 minutes to cap SM, but EB still had a queue on it!

Not wanting to be split up our small team for long, I quickly changed maps. Miller’s Sound Borderlands was my first pick as it didn’t have a queue.

At this point there was about 13 of us in the same channel on Mumble, but as I had my tag up we were running with about 20 people if we include the randomers.

What damage can 20 people do again the top-ranked server in our match-up on reset night?

A lot.

But what can 20 people do when you actively work with the other big groups on the map?

A lot more.

High Tier ([HT]) had loaded onto Miller’s Sound at the same time our group joined. While we didn’t coordinate that much to begin with, eventually we managed to pull off some fantastic maneuvers together - including an incredible ninja of bay thanks to a [HT] mesmer:

They didn’t have supply but did have a mesmer inside. We did have supply but didn’t have a mesmer inside. Combine them together and… voilà.

Or maybe I should be saying 'siehe’, considering the match-up.

With [MM] also on the map our three, big groups did some amazing things. We were not three factions who happened to play on the same server, on the same team. We were one army, moving as three separate units. We were three cats playing with a very tricky mouse.

We had… synergy.

We attacked and harassed the enemy forces for each other - like [MM] serving as a distraction up at Sunnyhill to give time for my forces and [HT] to breach Garrison from the east.

And we also balled up into a huge zerg when needed - like powers combining to form some sort of WvWvW Captain Planet.

To be honest, most of the night is a blur. I have reviewed my screenshots and most of them are like this:

Just a big fight. No indication as to where we were fighting, aside from looking at the mini-map.

But those fights are what made the night memorable. Mainly because, despite being a ragtag bunch that cracked jokes and put in funny accents for most of the evening, we were really successful. There were some intense moments, like when we were caught totally off-guard during a cap of Sunnyhill…

…But then we returned the favour later on in the exact same spot.

Overall, we played well and worked together as a team. In the end, isn’t that what really matters?

Although some people would argue that the highlight of the night was killing the giant wurm near the quarry supply camp, most folks will agree that our ability to turn pretty much the entire map our colour was the climax of the evening.

Ahem.

(We’re red, Miller’s Sound are green!)

Huge, huge thanks to everyone who listened to my commanding last night - your assistance was what made the night a success. My gratitude also goes out to [HT] and [MM], who both fielded big numbers but worked with us really well.

TL;DR: Amazing performance by everyone involved. From the people that rolled their smaller groups into our Frankenstein’s monster of a zerg, to those large guild groups ([MM] and [HT]) that our zerg worked with - by combining our forces, we brought Hell to Miller’s Sound last night.

Thanks for reading! If you liked this post, please remember that you can check out all of my After-Action Reports here. You can also now read some extra content for this report here!