TVM, Stomp Spar in Northmarch; Valdorum Under Siege

Trivium and Stomp are set to do battle for the first time in the Broken Lands, with TVM managing to set down a siege camp on Valdorum’s recently exodused city in Northmarch.

Word of the siege came at midnight server time when the Herald posted the siege details in their siege section:

Player Under Siege: Valdorum [Stomp] City Under Siege: Trivium can Suck It [-562|-1806] in Northmarch Under Siege By: Lorcan [TVM] Date: Mon 13 Jul 00:00

A secondary siege was established later by TVM’s Lord Moonpie at 05:38 ST. Currently, TVM is utilizing 5 squares to siege from in Northmarch. Valdorum chose a strong spot to settle on, as the city is surrounded by plains, which exposes siege and blockade armies to potentially withering siege-breaking cavalry attacks from Stomps. Look for Stomps to potentially use cavalry from Elgea to break this siege as well as from cities in the BL.

To try and mitigate the poor terrain for offense, TVM has two sieges and three blockades. Often times, alliances will use 6 to 8 squares for plains sieges to deny their opponents one simple target. However, it remains to be seen if two siege armies will get the job done for TVM, given Stomps’ potent military players.

The city “Trivium can Suck It” is Valdorum’s State of Grace, which made headlines last week when a reader tipped off the Times that this city had originally been the target of a SIN siege in Pawanallpa, but successfully exodused away. It appears that TVM put an operation in place in order to take advantage of the city’s vulnerability after the exodus. After cities exodus in Illyriad, they are subject to a 5-day “cooldown” period where military and diplomatic units cannot be used, nor can the city re-exodus.

In a comment to the Times about this siege, Stomp alliance leader Pico stated that “the majority of Sin´s razes have been against small pop towns, small stomp players, brought in to take on smaller alliances with land claims.”

Given the fact that Stomps is substantially outnumbered in the Broken Lands, the upstart alliance has effectively used exodus to avoid a number of sieges in the BL, the most high-profile of which was Ron Fay’s city of La Vila Strangiato, which exodused to Elgea from the Newlands to avoid TVM’s first siege attempt in the war, and has since reappeared in Pawanallpa to join the fight there and provide support to embattled Stomp cities.