I got some intel that another swarm was about to happen. MangoScribble (aka Loyallylion on Slack) saw the first article and wanted to try a similar strategy. After asking a few general questions about swarms he had a prototype ready to go the next day.

Let’s see how it goes.

A Long Line of Creeps

Check out that caravan! There were three RCL7 rooms spawning these creeps. MangoScribble is a relatively new player, his novice walls just went down about a day before the attack. I was impressed that a new player would take on something as advanced as swarm attacks so soon.

One challenge with a swarm is making sure your CPU bucket survives. He speculates that he could spawn up to 300 swarmers at once. He also let me know that he didn’t even start drawing from his bucket for the entire attack, not too shabby! I was proud to learn that he is using the Traveler library to move creeps around.

Here is the view he had through his client:

Two Towers

Let’s take a look at the defending room, shall we? I was surprised to find out that the defender was none other than CaptainMuscles. I happen to know the captain from episode 3 of the SWC, where we were on the same team (go squirrels!). I knew that he would not be a pushover.

I was surprised to see this room was RCL5 and there were two towers. The attack by nyoom had only one tower, and that was hard enough.

Steady In The Ranks

As MangoScribble’s creeps started to arrive, it was clear that there would be a complication. CaptainMuscles’ colony sent some guards to the room where they were waiting. Although MangoScribble had sent a bigger guard creep to handle this situation, it had died. This was a disaster for the defenseless swarmers.

Eventually they were being killed faster than they could gather and there was nothing to do but send them in and hope for the best (opens in YouTube).

Here We Go Again

If at first you don’t succeed, welcome to the club. Not ready to accept defeat, MangoScribble decided to try again the next day.

As expected, The Captain was no pushover. He had successfully been blockading the swarm for a good amount of time. MangoScribble saw that he had gotten to RCL6 and was building a terminal. If it is completed, his window of opportunity will close. He sent in some extra archers to deal with the blockade and started cooking up the swarm once again.

The Gathering Swarm

The blockade-distraction seemed to do the trick. MangoScribble was able to gather quite a bit more swarmers. One thing that I find really clever about MangoScribble’s solution is how he lines up his ranks so that they can enter the room in an orderly fashion.

The archers were slowly being killed, so the blockade would soon be able to stop the stream of swarmers. Would there be enough?

The Swarm Begins

I’ve uploaded this one as a YouTube video because it is quite long for a gif.



What a battle! Here is something very important that the video doesn’t show, about halfway through, Captain Muscles threw a safemode. My Screeps3D client doesn’t yet render safemodes, alas!

A good show from both players! MangoScribble proved he will be a force to reckon with, and this kind of attack from a player whose novice area just expired is impressive to say the least. However, I don’t think the war is over. Safemoding a room and taking it down are two different things. I don’t think we’ve seen the last from CaptainMuscles. Who knows, perhaps they will team up and wreak havoc on the rest of the region!

Although the video shows most of the swarmers die, another group eventually got through the blockade. Here was the status of the room last I checked.