Now that the world is closed, may I offer my congratulations to @Night.
I couldn't maintain the activity needed to run Norse alone, and I failed to set up any sort of fallback leadership in the event that I was pulled away from the game. The rampant destruction of ODKipperoo account is my fault and mine alone, I was unable to devote the activity needed to defend it (rather, I was gone for the entire first month of it being hit). Kudos to Guns and Blkdrgn, you hit hard.
As hindsight is 20/20, lots of 'couldas, wouldas, and shouldas' that I can look back on... would that have made any difference? Who knows. I think my single biggest mistake was joining the HP server with a bunch of Norse players... our two accounts were rank 1/2 the whole world, but we burnt out myself, mikebenji, CPBAH, mr savage 5, and if any one action can be attributed to losing this world, it was breaking the focus and interest of 4 of the most important accounts/players in our tribe.
Many in Norse have told me its the best-run/one of the best tribe they have ever played for... I wish I could feel the same way, but I've done better in some of my previous worlds, in my opinion... I had never duked a tribe at startup, and never taken a prearranged memberlist into a world - I've always been promoted to duke and built my tribes from existing foundations. I certainly learned a lot. I had never failed/lost as a duke before, so maybe it was the humbling experience I needed, and I have spent plenty of time reflecting on what I could have improved.
A few fun facts:
-This was supposed to be my last hurrah, build a tribe from the ground up, take it to the world win... with the grandiose manner that we imploded this just does not provide closure... guess I'm stuck playing again.
-Had I not been putting together a premade for w75 at the last minute, I would have ended up in @Night on Guns For Hire... Thoil and I were neighboring accounts on w68 and made a good team and spoke frequently even during w75. He's had my password before on other worlds. A congratulations to him, as in early world I told him that I thought he had too many starters and not enough mid-late game players and would run into difficulty there.
-I hated the Norse name from the very start. I knew that Thoil was bringing his Nordic premade to w75, but Jake/Dreamsweeper had this super-awesome-CoA that he had been wanting to use, so we went with Norse, even though we were not the true Norsemen on the world.
So congratulations to @Night. You guys won this world fair and square, and deserve the victory. We could not maintain activity when it mattered. I failed as duke to do what it took to ensure victory for my players.
I would welcome the opportunity to play with anyone from any tribe on w75 in the future, mintcream included - W75 is W75, other worlds are other worlds. I am running an aspiring tribe on w78, plenty of accounts could use a player or two - hop in at the 20-50 village stage when things are finally getting exciting if anyone is in need of a new muse.
Best of luck to all as you continue your Tribalwars careers, and godspeed in RL to those of you who have broken free now that 75 is over.
-Scott/Asalamalakum/Puff the Magic Asshole
