Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-9713390-20130621000010/@comment-9890645-20130621015742

Final Rank: 12!!! (To be honest, I wanted to settle at 13, see comments later as to why I moved out)

Final Score: 25,762,985

Deck Strength (Pre-event, during, and Post-event): Before: 11317. My deck progressed through the event to around 17-18K I think. To be honest, during the event, how much damage I was dealing concerned me more than the abstract deck power number. After MTMing and adding Ironhide and Wheeljack and having 2x Hook on team, my power is now 12667. :)

Money/Mobacoins Spent (Amount and Currency): Oh boy. Three tiers (1300) got me both parts of a Bonecrusher; three Hook packs (9000, which, in hindsight, I should have just bought all at once instead of one each of the three days); two failed Episode Weapon bridges (400); all the limited cube deals (1400) and one 150 cube pack (3000). Grand total - first time I'm doing this all event - is 15,100. Damn. Truth be told, I went into the event with pretty much the same amount of coins I ended with. I was prepared to spend more on cubes, but that proved unnecessary. I'm being honest about this because it really does cost money to make top 150 (unless you have insane bridge roulette luck), as I had proven to myself with the Hooks. (Will discuss this further after likes/dislikes.)

Medals (Type, Amount, and Draws): A TON. I pulled a bunch of R4s, though many were duplicates. Total: 2x Elite Skywarp alt, 3x Elite Jazz robot (I had an alt), Soundwave robot (already had one), Ironhide robot, Thundercracker alt (already had one), both parts of Arcee (YAY!), Shockwave and Starscream robots (I had both alts), and one episode Bonecrusher alt that I pulled... last night. :/ A few weapons, too, but nothing special outside of Elite Starscream's weapon. I didn't break many weapon medals because I felt the odds of pulling extra Hook and Bonecrusher weapons wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with the weapon bridge and the limited weapon card storage.

Liked: TEAMWORK!!! 10 men from the chat room finished in the top 150, and none of us could have done it without each other and the rest of our amazing crew. We got there, folks, we got there - domination!!! A huge thank you and congratulations to you all, especially all the men who made late runs for their respective ranks, particularly Thunderclonus, Zameezamzam and Joejitsu22 for INCREDIBLE late runs into the top 150. :D With that said, as far as the event itself, the X1/X2 stampede was fun for a while but it was WAY too long and distracted people from everything else. I MVP'd 5 of them and only once - the first time - did I overspend the reward. Three times were done with a 1-cube and a 3-cube and only one of those was over 100 million damage. I missed two MVPs, but I got the finisher on one instead, so, whatever. Otherwise, standard event, nothing to see here, except...

Disliked: OMFG the stealth buffs!!! The Day 1 buff to Ratchet 5 nearly derailed my run to end the first 24 hours at 2,000,000 points and add the second MTM Bonecrusher in. The other stealth buffs were just annoying, but their frequency was frustrating. The whole ally system is absolutely screwy from top to bottom - having to restart the app every time you add or remove allies to sending requests to inactive players - and needs a serious overhaul. There are (obviously, as we proved) benefits to the ally system, but it's FAR from good, let alone perfect. Also cute but slightly annoying how everyone fills your ally requests when you're on top. ;)

Comments: This event was a learning journey for me. After 3 straight full second-tier finishes, I figured this would be a decent chance to try and finish in the top tier. It was a grueling ordeal. Ending Day 1 in 3rd was really cool from the outside, but hell on me; however, I had something to prove this event, and I was determined to prove it. I should have bought the Hooks all at once; not only would it have given me a huge sniping range earlier in the game, it would have also allowed me to farm a little longer than I was able to, and I blew too many cubes both suffering from lack of power and testing the newly-acquired power. Also, the coordination provided by the chat room was critical on the later days... Thanks again, all of you!!! :D