AianNick abandons

Well known TUF member AianNick abandoned yesterday following the ban’ of ThorOdin who was AianNick’s alt. According to various sources, AianNick had accused SIN of causing his alt to be banned prior to his abandonment, Duran Shadowfist (who was in global chat at the time) denied that, during the conversation viperone, the coleader of TUF declared he might be departing from illyraid soon as well:

 ‘[06:50]<viperone> i will be shortly leaving this game to the cheaters’

Not to long after the Illyriad Times published an article about this matter, in the comments listed a ‘letter’ from GM Rikoo, supposedly sent to AianNick, stating the following:

‘From: GM Rikoo [DEVS]

 Subject: FW: Investigation of multis

 Received: 15 Sep 2016 19:29

 Original Message:

I am investigating several complaints, and have been updating with the weekly reports we get.

Before I get too much into it, I will give you a chance to tell me all of the accounts you control so I can mark off some of them. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, but I will just ban the extras and possibly all of them.

By control I mean sitting as well. Thanks.’

GM rikoo had this to say when it was posted in global chat:

‘[20:13]<GM Rikoo> Just a warning: sharing faked IGMs that mention me is not a good idea. But thanks for the wall of red. Lol’

GM Stormcrow said the following when inquired to about the mail:

[01:45]<GM Stormcrow> I don't know whether he sent this email, what it means if he did or did not send it, or anything about it whatsoever. And I don't care tbh.
[01:45]<GM Stormcrow> The simple fact is that a) We want as many people playing Illy as possible
[01:45]<GM Stormcrow> and b) We will ban cheats
[01:46]<GM Stormcrow> We have no interest in banning people from the game if they're abiding by the rules...
[01:46]<GM Stormcrow> And that's about the end of it

As no evidence of its confirmation or denial has been released as of yet, and due to the dev policy of not announcing player bans or their reasons, we cannot truly know if it was faked or not.

Angrim of the Ecrow alliance later stated that the system for banning a multi-accounter is done via a trusted algorithm and not player testimony.

This is the most recent in a string of bans on players involved in wars. The last bans caused the TUF/YARR! war to end in a draw after Ranalos and Rigor.mortis were banned. 

Author: Dakota

TUF under fire with a double siege op

AianNick's town of Freiburg and Kaven's town of just stolen both came under siege at exactly 4 am this morning. OleBlacklord is sieging AianNick's town whilst What The DEUCE? is sieging Kaven.

The siege on Freiburg was broken around 16:45 by ThorOdin, AianNick's alt, taking out over 200k SIN troops in a single hit.

Agalloch seems confident that the siege on Kaven's town will be broken shortly as well.

When I reached out to Saffron in GC, she declined to comment on the sieges.

TUF is now in confederation with EE, indicating that they are likely to cooperate with sieges in the future.

A siege by He-man on one of Janadorf's towns was almost broken by Walnut though due to a mistake, Walnut 'sent cav to wrong sq so siege force survived and captured'.

UPDATE: What The DEUCE?'s siege on Kaven was successful. The city fell at 10:12 on the 28th.

Author: Eowan The Short

RE suffers two razes in as many days

In the past two days, TUF has razed two of RE's towns. The first was on vgsrhhheth in the Long White. This siege was similar to the one on the failed siege on Knight of Ancients, taking advantage of the city's isolation from RE's main cluster in Westmarch. However, RE were unable to break the siege and the town of lonesome fell to ThorOdin at 9:32 on the 10th July.

Elfend was the second town to fall to TUF, this time to AianNick. The Illyriad Times reported that Xander also had a siege on Elfend. The town, formerly belonging to parthenon, was also isolated as it was in Middle Kingdom. This seems to reflect a common strategy for TUF where they pick off towns where help will take a long time to arrive. The town was razed at 18:13 on the 11th of July.

This double raze is likely to have been a big blow to RE's morale but could also reflect a depletion of troops after the recent tournament in which they lost just over 1 million troops. RE will still have enough troops to defend within their landclaim but towns further away might be left with insufficient support.

Author: Eowan The Short