Author: FaultProofBen
Gm!
Last week, I walked you through my epic bag fumble in the first-ever Sky Strife tournament, and how that experience made me realize that the permanent, open, emergent nature of onchain games and autonomous worlds makes them very conducive to creating lore.
To my surprise, a lot of you seemed to enjoy that story and hearing about my in-game shenanigans!
I don’t want everyone to think I’m that bad at Sky Strife, so today, I thought I’d try to change this perception and deepen the onchain lore by telling you all the story of my redemption.
No, this is not a drill.
On August 25, during their most recent playtest, I won my first-ever match of Sky Strife.
And here’s how I did it.
As always, the following is just my interpretation of a series of transactions. It may be correct, or entirely made up.
You’ll have to check the chain yourself to know whether I’m telling the truth ;)
Previously on WASD
Before I share my tale of victory, here’s a bit of background on what I wrote about last week.
On August 18, I participated in the first-ever Sky Strife tournament hosted by the [WE] clan.
For those who haven’t heard of it, Sky Strife is a turn-based, PVP, real-time strategy (RTS) game built in MUD by the Lattice team.
The objective of Sky Strife is to destroy other players' primary settlements (the settlements from which they spawn) while defending your own.
The way you do so is by summoning units, which are knights that you deploy across the map each turn in order to conquer your foes.
In my tournament match, I made a colossal tactical error by leaving my primary settlement completely undefended, causing it to be swiftly destroyed and effectively eliminating me from the game.
As I discussed, a record of this humiliating defeat will live forever in onchain infamy on the Lattice Testnet.
Because of this, I could not let that proof-of-loss exist without some commensurate proof-of-victory.
I needed to redeem myself, and I sought to do so during the next Sky Strife playtest which was held on Friday, August 25.
For more info on Sky Strife’s gameplay and mechanics (which I’m excluding for brevities sake), I’d highly recommend you check my piece from last week. You can do so by clicking here.
The Agent Of Chaos
My shot at redemption began at 7:30 a.m. PST.
This upped the pressure to win even further, because it meant I could not excuse a loss on being tired like with the tournament, which began at 6:15 a.m. PST.
After downing some Philz Coffee, I opened the Sky Strife site, hopped in the Lattice voice channel, joined my match, and was ready to go.
It wouldn’t be a FaultProofBen onchain gaming experience without some self-inflicted hijinks and sure enough, I accidentally joined two matches. I wound up rugging one, which made that one a three-player game.
Whoops!
Anyways, in the game in which I participated my primary settlement spawned in the lower left quadrant of the map. I faced off against three new opponents: Frolic, who spawned in the upper left, Kk who was in the upper right, and Ari who spawned in the bottom right.
The match began like most others: With a gold rush.
I raced to claim the two mines directly above me, trying to fill my coffers with gold (the in-game currency used to purchase units) before the resource was depleted.
In terms of units, I chose to load up on my usual mix of Pikeman (the strongest units) and Archers (the only ranged units) so I could snipe my enemies from afar and bludgeon them in melee combat.
However, this time I decided to mix things up a bit and also buy some Pillagers.
Pillagers are the units with the highest mobility, meaning you can move them the furthest across the map in one turn. They also deal the most damage of unit type to settlements and mines.
I wanted to use these Pillagers to probe enemy forces to deal damage to a high-value unit like a Pikeman or Archer, or to quickly capture a mine or settlement while another player's attention was elsewhere.
I, and many other players, typically like to avoid skirmishes in the early stages of a Sky Strife match, so I was caught off guard when Ari attacked me shortly into the game.
It was Ari’s first time playing, and while on paper it may seem like that would work to my advantage, in reality, his inexperience proved to be a wildcard that nearly rekt my chance at victory.
This because instead of building up my army of units, I had to fight, risking elimination and another devastating defeat.
Despite being caught off balance, I managed to withstand the attack, defeating the units he threw at me.
I think Ari’s aggressive blitz strategy could have worked, but he spread his forces too thin, as he attacked both myself and Kk at the same time. This led to all of his troops being defeated, knocking him out of the match.
The Coldest Of Wars
That battle was the last act of aggression we’d see for a while, as afterward, a stalemate of epic propositions between Kk, Frolic, and I began.
In this standoff, the first player to attack, and the player they were attacking, were the most likely to lose, as their forces would be depleted in the ensuing skirmish. This would leave the surviving player at a unit deficit relative to the third player, whose forces remained untouched.
This means that to win, I needed the discipline and patience to avoid making the first move, as well as some luck to avoid being the target of an attack.
I think the other players knew this too, because for more than fifteen, nail-biting minutes, the three of us waited.
And waited.
And waited.
It was a cold war for the ages, and the tension was palpable as the three remaining players waited to see who would break the ice.
Just when it felt as if this stalemate would last forever, it thankfully broke in my favor.
Frolic and Kk capitulated, attacking one another and battling it out for supremacy over the top half of the map.
I was thrilled, knowing that this greatly increased my odds of winning. However, I had to remain focused and disciplined in order to avoid self-rugging.
Once kk had established the upper hand, I decided to employ my probe strategy. I sent an Archer and a Swordsman (the weakest unit in the game), which I had managed to spawn with excess gold that I earned from killing Ari’s units, to battle Frolic.
For the most part, this endeavor was unsuccessful, but I did manage to deal damage to one of Frolic’s Pikeman.
After some more skirmishes, Kk managed to emerge victorious and eliminated Frolic. But his victory was a pyrrhic one, as he had just 4-5 units left, only one of which was a Pikeman.
Meanwhile, my forces remained relatively unscathed, as I had eight units and five Pikemen remaining.
The numbers were on my side.
It was now time to attack and finish the fight.
Redemption
To get to kk’s primary settlement, I had to go through his remaining forces.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed managing a lot of units in one turn, so I decided to send a series of small strike forces to take them out.
To start, I chose to send a single unit, my Hero, on a solo quest. A Hero is the unit you first spawn with. It’s very powerful, as it has the second-highest strength and highest health rating in the game.
My Hero journeyed north and had a glorious rampage for the ages, taking down three of Kk’s units, including their final Pikeman, before being killed.
The Hero’s sacrifice will not be forgotten, nor was it in vain, as Kk had a single, injured unit left by the time he fell.
To eliminate this final unit, I sent in my second strike team of an Archer and another Swordsman. The two did their job, eliminating the straggler and leaving Kk’s primary settlement undefended.
After a brutal war of attrition that lasted over half an hour, my Archer ended the game with a final kill shot.
At long last, victory was mine.
I had finally redeemed myself and won a match of Sky Strife.
And a sweet victory it was.
But again, don’t just trust what I tell you.
You (and everyone for the rest of time) can see the truth for yourselves:
0x844940b51453cee43eb22353d0482919e4dc7e25ce3dde50e3fb590b4c8c6175
The TLDR:
The hottest news from the last week in onchain gaming and autonomous worlds.
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Minters announce their new MUD-based game Battle on Blockchain
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Gaul announces their September playtest and joins the Small Brain discord
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Starknet hits 126 TPS and becomes the first L2 to exceed triple-digits
Plays of the Week:
Three onchain games to try out for yourself this week.
Words from Frens:
The best non-WASD articles, videos, and conversations from the past week.
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Read: Large Lore Models - dmstfctn, Eva Jager, Alasdair Milne
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Listen: What’s A Fully Onchain Game Anyway - Good Game Podcast
Game Spotlight: Gaul
Game Overview:
Gaul is an in-development sokoban road-building game.
In Gaul, players will be able to explore a procedurally generated, 3D world by paving roads. There is limited public information, but based on available footage and dev commentary, players will be able to do this by destroying, moving, and mining objects.
Gaul is being developed by the Engine Study team, who previously created a site where you can connect your wallet and release visual representations of the NFTs its hold into a digital world.
On August 21, Engine Study announced that playtests for Gaul would be held in September and that they were joining the Small Brain Games Discord.
Small Brain Games is the team behind several onchain games like Words3, Network States, Dark Seas, and Ape’s Gambit, and while details are limited, Engine Study joining their Discord suggests that the two are partnering in some deeper fashion.
The WASD Take:
I’m very excited to try Gaul. The graphics look great, and I think there’s a lot of potential to create interesting experiences with fully onchain, sandbox-style construction primitives.
I’m also curious how Gaul will leverage its close ties to Small Brain Games. I imagine this will likely help them in sharing development and marketing resources, but I wonder if there will be any sort of composability between Gaul and Small Brain titles like Words3.
All in all, I’ll definitely be participating in Gaul’s September playtest, and will be watching closely to see what comes of their alliance with Small Brain.
🏺
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Have a great Monday!