Today, we’re going to go through some statistics of the shards journeys to date, a recap shards 1, 14, 17, 19, 29, 30 and we’ve got a great story in from Ireland.
Unfortunately we don’t have as many stories today because everyone is too busy moving the shards around and creating the stories to write! If you would like to join the team of reporters to write recaps of any of the shards, let us know. Otherwise, if you’d just like to submit a sitrep of your teams awesome work, you can submit it here: http://fevgames.net/wpgforms/shonin-shard-stories
Shards #1, 14, 17, 19, 29, 30 – Recap: Shards on the Run
Shard #7 – Story (Enl): Shard #7 Ireland Sitrep
Since our first Daily Update, the shards combined have traveled the equivalent of another lap around the equator clocking up a total of 287107.89 kms. The most traveled shard to date is #24 which started in Perth, was taken to Canada then stolen by the Enlightened there and sent to Norway moving 29779.59 kms in 30 out of 67 jumps. The shard that has travel the smallest distance so far is #27 moving 246.68 kms in 36 out of 67 jumps.
Even though the Resistance have got 3 shards home, the Enlightened currently have 7 shards within 1,000 kms of their target compared to only 1 in that range for the Resistance.
Shards #1, 14, 17, 19, 29, 30 – Recap
By Thomas Sounness
Shards on the Run
Before the last movement I wrote:
“There have been a couple of big & interesting shard movements. There have been two shards removed from the field of play in Europe using a most unassuming piece of weaponry. Three VRLA chained together on a small post office on Canton-Tremblay (in northern Quebec) have lead to two shards being been plucked, one from Norway’s coastline and one from Ireland’s northern portal “Moon at Mailin Head”– both now placed together under one faction’s control. In this, Resistance is doing exceptionally well – three shards are already in place on the Washington Monument.”
However, it appears since writing that, and with that last tick, that both shards have been taken to Europe – to “Moon at Mailin Head” – Having two shards being taken by the Resistance to Ireland further away from their target makes little sense to me. I presume there is a better path of entry from that part of Ireland to the Washington Monument. Or it could have been a major miscalculation on the part of the Resistance, and they thought the shards would not return over the Atlantic. Either way, I imagine there are some people thinking that this is either impressively clever planning, or is hoping that no-one would notice.
Looking at the circumstances around the Netherlands, I have to say that it seems that getting shards to Rotterdamn’s “Docking Stones” appears difficult – there seems to be very impressive defensive actions by the European Resistance. The closest a fragment has gotten to the Rotterdam target was fragment #19 – with 8.9km – this shard is now in Southern Belgium. The second closest, shard #1 – with 10.15km – was taken away to England by the Resistance and then taken to the rather picturesque French coastline – now some 475km away from the “Docking Stones”. This territory is new to ingress shard battles, so I am pleased to see new areas being introduced to the entertaining fatigue of Link Battles.
In other news, a big leap of two shards (#17 & #29) from south America has given Portugal’s Resistance something to play for, and since these are now being stored at the Azores islands, it is giving the Enlightened something to plan with.
By Florian Stravock
It all starts at 23:00 on Thursday, with @reviresco, @Deathspulse and @frjoethesecond leave Galway making the 90 minute trip to Renvyle to build a P7 for our new friend to arrive. They work quickly and stay under the radar, trying not to raise any alarms, virusing and clearing any potential problem links on the way. They succeed and finally finish up at 03:30.
Friday morning, @craicdealer makes the trip down from Dublin, leaving at 06:00, collecting @Xadacka on the way, we make good time and arrive to Renvyle at 11:00, ready to receive the shard at 12:00. @reviresco arrives shortly after and we successfully receive #7 at 12:00. We quickly upgrade and flip the portal blue and return to clearing potential blockers and preparing our backup exit plans. We arrive back to flip again a few times and successfully get the portal to P8. When we return for the final preparations at 16:00…. PROBLEM, @MadMarlow has arrived to try to ruin our plans.
But @MadMarlow has a broken leg, I say to myself, how did he make it here!? This is clearly going to be a problem. We weren’t expecting any company. We get on comms and decide what we’re going to do, how we’re going to get around this. We plant some intel and try misdirect him, leading him to believe our plan is the send the shard inland. Just as we were pulling away, Marlow tries to find out why @stratnolegs was seen in Belfast. “I see no legs is in Belfast today, that’s a surprise???” to which @craicdealer replies, in his best most sarcastic voice, “Oh? Is he? That IS a surprise???” and pull away instantly.
We form our plan, and then when @MadMarlow goes away for a bit to try and throw blockers against our apparent inland plans or northerly plans, we quickly get into place and, in the end, at 17:55, we flip the portal (currently blue), destroy as fast as we can, build P7, and deploy 3 AXA shields, leaving an empty slot for a VRLA if we feel it safe to use. Marlow rushes back at this point, and does his best to stop us from moving it. We felt it too risky to deploy the VRLA with him attacking us, so we use contingency plan B to move the shard into Clifden. We successfully maintain control and the shard has moved to it’s new home.
Side Note: at this part, my (@Xadacka) battery is almost dead and somehow we all managed to forget battery packs, and only had one charging port in the car -@MadMarlow gave me a battery at about 17:00 to get me through the upcoming battle. Cannot express how grateful I am for this, and that he’s a testament to the game. So impressed with his gesture.
Now, the easy part is over, time to prepare for the next movement; we have 6 hours to prepare for what is hopefully our final movement. But first… time for a pint!
We all end up heading back to where we came from. As we’re not without our drivers,@h2otroy and @menacing drive up from Limerick and collect me and @deathspulse on the way, due to distance and traffic, we believe we’re only going to arrive with 15 minutes to spare before the movement. I had led RES to believe that me and @Deathspulse would be going drinking in Galway for the night and jokingly mentioned “sure I might see you at the 6am movement” to throw them off. It worked. They were not expecting us at midnight.
We arrived at 23:40, went for a quick drink down the road, then got into position.@Falconire was the only RES we saw on site, and figured a 4 on 1 battle would be easy enough. We capsuled all our keys apart from 3, our main destination, a backup abroad, and a backup in Ireland that wouldn’t be easy to get to.
@nCoder tells us on hangout that @MadMarlow just showed up, so it’s time to move. We sneak up to the portal at 23:52, we all hide behind a big van so the enemy wouldn’t see us, and then all at once we prepare and…. fire!
We knock the portal, quickly build it and the other 3 agents deploy AXAs, we hold it until about 23:56 and I make the decision that we can safely deploy the VRLA and make the link. As fast as I can, I deploy the mod and make the link, it instantly shows up and I hit link…. My scanner stalls for a second, I’m not sure what happened and then… LINK ESTABLISHED! I jump into mods to see if the VRLA is still there and… it’s gone! Any hesitation and we would have failed, I quickly deploy another AXA, and get to helping recharge and making sure the mods stick. 4 minutes of deploying mods and recharging and…. success! The shard has moved, we are clear! We all scream and shout, hangouts and telegram starts going crazy, it’s gone!! We succeeded!
It was a long day with many little problems but it was a fantastic result and everyone involved played a blinder.
Special thanks to everyone not mentioned in the main story above.
@nCoder for shouting at us for the night and making sure we had the intel we needed during the second movement. The Maine team for getting it to us and the Azores team for taking it from us.@frjoethesecond gets a special mention for taking his first cargress trip on Thursday night, I’m sure the first time jumping into a car with @Deathspulse and @reviresco is nothing if not terrifying 😛 Shout out to the Dublin crew that had to do days of this for Shard #8, and to everyone who’s involved with moving these around and puts in countless hours.
If you would like your report added to tomorrow’s update, submit it here: http://fevgames.net/wpgforms/shonin-shard-stories
Thanks to Thrakazog for the Shard tracking map and Marwan Sbitani for collecting the data for the map.