[VenoX]

I wasn't going to bother giving this thread the time of day since I know the majority of those involved, know full well that Forests mail to CT was full of factual inaccuracies and were quietly pleased when Forests attempts at controlling multiple blocks into a war that benefits CT, blew up right in his face but here goes anyway..

First of all, calling something a backstab implies that Forest wasn't aware of the deal about to be agreed to with Ult and Co. This is simply not the case. I'll explain..

Forest was happy for CT to quietly ride the fence and attempt to benefit from the drawn out war between IB and Ult in the hope of manoeuvring CT into a position where they could win. He would say CT will hit Ult in their gal raids and we'd end up getting just as much incomings from CT (if not more on some days) than they were putting on Ult at all. After a few days of this, a separate block channel was made without Forest/CT and we continued along without them. To be clear, Forest was claiming that he was doing this behind gm's back, that he didn't have the authority to get CT fully involved and that I shouldn't speak to gm myself because he was mad that we'd hit them in gal raids earlier in the round.

Now by the time IB agreed to nap Ult and Co, we'd had incomings from 3 alliances for near on 14 days straight. Our activity was dying, we were barely launching fleets any more and due to the various politics of other alliances, there was no sign of this status quo changing any time soon. Norse had already committed to hitting us til EOR because they saw an Ultores win as them winning too. Carnage were busy kingmaking Ult by crashing red calcs on us endlessly, sapping our morale, because we were losing ships and roids regularly, even on covered defences. And this all because apparently we'd dared to attack some of them in gal raids earlier in the round when they were napped to 75% of the universe.

My fellow HC in IB were tired and looking for a way out, I was against giving up and napping Ult. I suggested that I could attempt to get CT to finally commit to hitting Ult, tying up some more enemy fleets and making some morale boosting headway into Ults roid/value lead. I explained to Forest the full situation, that we were done, we had a deal on the table to nap Ult and that their free ride was going to be over unless they decided to get involved. Forest made promises again to actually put some fleets onto Ult and claimed some targets from our shared spreadsheet. At this point, Forest was fully aware and in complete control of the situation unfolding in front of him. All he had to do was commit the fleets he said he would and our deal with Ult was dead. The next day, after receiving a fair chunk of incomings from CT ourselves, we checked how many fleets CT put onto Ult. It was 21. The same old story as it had been all round. It was at that point I gave up trying to persuade my fellow IB HC not to take the deal with Ultores, and the deal was signed to end the war.

I am still proud of what Ironborn has achieved in our first round as a full alliance even if we ultimately fell short of winning, at least we actually gave it a shot and didn't settle for planet/galaxy ranks like everyone else did. We have learned lessons and will be back next round to try all over again.