Sheep Tag Community

Chapter 5 - Hcs Challenged!

Hcs grew and grew. Ironically Pigger was in charge of "recruitment" despite being godawful at that, and frappa along with others did most of the recruiting in reality. Pigger mostly just told pubs look how **** good I am, come be my ****. Eventually there were pros who were not in hcs (besides Pure). Hcs doctrine usually referred to them as semi-pros or sometimes just plain noobs. One of the first alternate clans (name forgotten) was lead by MonsterGarage, a very, very chill dude. The best way to characterize Monsta is Ed if he smoked a lot of weed. One of his notable shamans was BBGS-Cutie, my first wc3 love. I truly miss her. Would totally date irl. It was a much smaller clan, but there were in fact clan wars on east for the first time. Hcs was dominant and never lost to them.

A later, more serious challenge grew from Ydoc. He had been playing on west, where the competition was much fiercer. He was part of clan 13a5 in west and eventually he moved back to East and made a 13a5 branch there. Ydoc was SGOD blood, and thus had legitimacy in making a pro ST clan, which bothered the hcs leadership to no end. They were very, very hostile to Cody (yes his name is ydoc spelled backwards, so cute). Ydoc also brought along a westy 13a5_MassDeath formatted with some weird symbols like 13a5_Massl)3ath, idr. He played a considerable amount on east and was quite good, meaning this clan had at least 2 pros on the same caliber as hcs shamans. While they perhaps never had a superior shaman crew overall, these two players made them more than just noob posers, and frappa, Pigger, 2nd HATED them. What's worse is Ydoc was perhaps the best host on East in these days, and being host gave a tremendous advantage. This made him games popular among hcs grunts, which made the leadership very upset, as Ydoc was good enough to be the best player in any game he hosted. Pure for his part didn't like Cody, but at this point was so fed up with hcs, that he preferred 13a5, or at least loved the idea of hcs having competition. He would be willing to sub in for them in clan wars, while not actually wanting to join their clan. This naturally caused all kinds of debate about the legality of such a move, as 3 top tier pros meant a serious threat in any clan war. They were still the bigger clan and had more top tier players, but there was now a clear rival, and Ydoc looked like the best player in East during his host. Not to mention coming from a west clan, Ydoc had more west allies than hcs did, which clouded the picture in West of which East clan was dominant.

The reaction from hcs leadership was censorship of 13a5 and occasional exile of members who "played too often" with them. This threat kept most of the members in line. They also started routinely visiting and playing with westies to gain more experience, especially in clan wars, vs their newfound rival. Mitnek and 2nd played the most with westies. The result was 2nd thought he was becoming better than frappa and pigger, while Mitnek was actually becoming even better than that.

I was at a special crossroads at this point in time. I had become in practice the best of the hcs grunts, on par with or perhaps even better than Akraea. I also was friends with Pure, and more and more started hanging out and learning from Cody. This drove Pigger especially crazy. More than once he called for me being kicked from the clan. Frappa and I were good buddies though, and 2nd was concerned that if I left and joined 13a5 that would shift the balance of power from hcs superiority to equality with 13a5. So as much as 2nd didn't like me, his priority was always being the best and the clan being the best. As such, I faced no consequences for associating with cody and pure. Ydoc himself saw me as an opportunity to turn the scales as well and repeatedly ask me to clan war for him if hcs wasn't going to let me. Upon hearing this Frappa decided as long as I pledged continued loyalty I would be used in some clan wars, mostly replacing Akraea. Clan wars were usually 4v4 at this time, so it was 4 out of 5 of Frappa, Pigger, Mitnek, 2nd and Akraea. Akraea had been playing less and less and was overall such a nice person and a friend that she didn't mind if I took her spot a few times.

Due to increased competition hcs started playing 7.5 Pro, a 4v4 map more often. People would practice 2v4 vs pubs or 4v4 with clanmates. Frost farms were also a little more expensive I think, and cyclones removed. Most easties still diamonded. Brown1430 when he played still gridded the normal way exclusively though. Mitnek also tended to grid in serious games. Pure had started to build sloppily all over the place, making it more difficult to cut and golem jump him although he had smaller masses.

West had grown substantially and was probably 5-8 times bigger than East, truly dwarfing it in size. A westy could much better elaborate on the big names and the big clans. Towards the end of this period clan Jedi emerged as the strongest ST clan in the world. They were seemingly unbeatable on the battlefield, and hcs got demolished in several clan wars, to the point where even Pigger admitted they were better. He actually tried out for and was very proud to have made it in clan Jedi, as they had instituted very strict tryouts to join their clan and it took him several attempts. It wasn't just mass speed but you had to 1v3 (IIRC) their shams and be impressive.

I've obviously omitted Europe. Obviously as clan behh was made the first day clans were allowed as well, there was a European community. They had virtually no contact with West-East (although Sidey had moved gateways and was playing in west at this time). The maps the Europeans played would not have been considered competitive or serious. I am not familiar with old Euro maps, but they would have likely been considered on par with other pub maps of the day.

However, a new map had emerged on the pub game landscape, "Ultimate Sheep Tag". This was based off 7.5 terrain, however it was more closed off. Instead of the one noob box 7.5 had, this one had 3, as well as a spiral. This was more conducive to pub play as most people couldn't mass well but could build a base in a corner, build savings farms and then mass stuns. Stuns were smaller, and with enough gold to support many of them, could stop an approaching shepherd cold in their tracks, even kill them. To the chagrin of the pro community, the mapmaker TheWinner didn't care about any of their input and wanted to do his own thing. Prior to ultimate coming out, the pro maps 7.5 and 7.1 were also the plurality of maps hosted publicly. Ultimate with its newb focus would eventually come to occupy a bigger and bigger share of these games. Most pros just saw ultimate as replacing 10.1 and perfect, and it was preferable to those, so they viewed this as a good thing. Eventually though ultimate would have a negative impact on recruiting new pros.