I'll try and pick this up where Bounch left off. Some of this is over 2 years old now and mostly I just have my memory to rely on. If anything is found to be incorrect please let me know.
The last few things Bounch had posted had to do with [H]egemony falling apart after warring us, having internal problems, and then being declared on by Raging Thunder and portions(?) of Shadow Monks. Some of Hegemony joined Clear! at this point but were already engaged in war with SM. I think of the accounts that joined I personally ended up sitting like 6 frontline accounts over the course of a couple days. The [H] players that joined were pretty well spent. Some were great, some were already quitting! This was pretty trying. We had the resources to defend this border but it was taking time to get things moved around.
Around this time T4H declared war on us followed shortly by BUL. T4H was tough as nails in the North and BUL while far away was bored and ready for some action. Raging Thunder was disbanding - some accounts went to BUL and some to COLD. The Rihiter account in particular was the closest one to Clear! and joined BUL. It was quickly flooded with incoming attacks from Clear! and massive waves of support from BUL. That area of the war fairly well stalemated quickly. SM was left with the choice of who to join. Because of a few difficult members in SM (namely ImaBallBreaker) we chose to move any interested persons over to Storm until the dust could settle. At the time war with SM, Nomad, BUL, T4H, and COLD seemed a very real possibility so it seemed good to have the war with SM quieted down and the prospect of warring the rest of the world at that point seemed doable. I will admit that part of my decision was influenced by how much account sitting I and a few other leaders were having to do on the ex-H/SM border. Pressure really does work! BUL while not exactly neutralized was still pretty far off and had to rely on far off attacks and using the Rihiter account to keep pressure on when they could. The ex SM/Nomad members put some pressure on BUL and really kept things in check while they cleaned up the southeast.
T4H on the other hand were fiercely strong and the greatest opponent Clear! ever faced. The war started out strongly for a well prepared T4H but eventually even T4H suffered from inactivity following the 2010 Christmas cease-fire. It's still not clear why this happened but it did. I would say that if this hadn't happened both tribes might still be around and fighting it out still today. I would speculate that there was tensions among the members of T4H who were far from Clear! and wanted to war COLD/Dineh but weren't permitted. At this point BUL and T4H did a bit of a merger along with a few COLD members (I could be wrong on this one). While now on par with Clear! in terms of real estate (or at least potential real estate) the tribe never really improved and began a downward spiral.
At some point during the T4H/BUL/Clear conflict, a tentative alliance was made with a tribe made of Pinoy members in a newly formed Hegemony. This alliance never really found it's footing and was eventually dissolved because it just never worked between the players. Even I must admit in hindsight that I'm not sure what the point of the alliance was other than to give another tribe of players in the world a place in the fight. They chose our side and that was good enough for me at the time. If they'd chosen the other side then that would have been fine as well. I believe Mike Biscuit and Paolo83 were pretty well determined to end that alliance and to that end they succeeded.
IMK at some point during the war with T4H also dissolved after an extremely long war with T4H. They were always a respected ally and I'd be happy to say that while the timing was never right for IMK they certainly were there for Clear! in turning things around on Moogle. Much respect for Warham, xFirestorm, and IMK (who were for all intents and purposes a bunch of new players that did pretty well).
Storm, which served a thousand different roles over the years eventually disbanded as well. Originally it was intended to only hold inactive accounts as food for the active accounts in Clear. Sooner or later it would always end up with active accounts in it as well for either training or at one point it even grew up to pick it's own fights. (Actually it was originally led by recce7 long before Clear! existed and it dominated K35 and K36 but that's a story he could tell if he wanted to. Most of the time Clear! didn't really tell the active members of Storm what to do and while we were on the same side (not enemies) we would often have different agendas. Other times they fully engaged in battle alongside us, particularly while wrightway was running things.
Which brings us to the final year of world 26. A reformed Nomad was the final tribe to battle, led by the absolutely cunning Paolo83. This tribe also had potential but had a hard time getting key accounts it could have used to dominate in some areas. Too many players that weren't in Clear or Nomad were too afraid to pick a side until it was far too late. For a tribe made of scraps Nomad and it's ancillary tribes held on for about a year despite getting trounced in the stats. Clear! slowly dwindled down members over the last couple years for the usual reasons tribes lose members. When it was clear the world was over Clear! recruited a couple active people who this duke felt were fast noblers to help make the end game not drag out for months longer than necessary. (It was boring!)
The world near the end elected to continue the game until a tribe 100% dominated the world. That tribe was Clear Blue Skies.
i played as Mitsche...
