The Hurt Heal Times: Week 2

Introduction

Welcome to the second edition of the Hurt/Heal Times for week 2 of Hurt/Heal V. I’m your writer, BermudanPM and we’ve had a good week of Hurt/Heal. We’ve seen wars, brawls, accusations and some great strategies played this week so let’s get into it.

Leaderboard

This is the current leaderboard done by Space. 

The rules are in the first edition.

Hurt/Heal V Week 2

So we’ve had a fairly intense week in Hurt/Heal V but I’ll start with the list of players and their games. I’ll start with first place, which is Cosmic. Now, I don’t think anyone expected Cosmic to be doing so well but after Carlsen stopped getting constantly healed and Mjtcan went on holidays, Cosmic was able to get himself a strong lead, as he should be over 100 lives when this gets posted.This is due to his strategy and his strong alliance, however this alliance is seemingly causing a bit of conflict. We have had no proper fighting yet but tensions are high between them and toast’s alliance. This escalated as Cactus hurt Tricks and Deflection and Cactus were defending the action and tensions were very high. Mjtcan was also involved but nothing escalated between Cosmic and Mjt but tensions are still high. We had a very tense interaction between Cosmic and Toast which you can see here.

We’ll see where this leads but that wasn’t the only conflict toast’s alliance has. Some of Toast's allies have attacked Tarbo and his alliance. Now Tarbo’s alliance is fairly unorganised but Sharsh, Dino and Tarbo are strong allies but some people have wanted them gone. On this note we did have a controversy around this. It was that people (including me) were accusing Tarbo of using Dino as an alt to self heal. Now this was proven false but it caused quite a stir up and a headache for the CVC staff.

Another point I’ll mention is that this week, hurting was made mandatory for each heal someone makes.

This was after people were saying that the game was going too slowly, with Mjtcan leading the charge calling for all players with four lives or below to be killed. Some disagreed, but many others agreed but this was all that they did. 

In terms of players, nothing too crazy has happened but Cosmic is pulling away from the competition. Noah has kept playing a good game as has Obanai but the main competition is between Cosmic, Mjtcan and Carlsen who are all fighting valiantly. Some players have been moving up into higher places and some have been dropping (like me). Everything I have talked about here is setting us up for some more great, entertaining Hurt/Heal. Time to see some point of views from influential players in the game.

Interviews

This week we had 3 big interviews from Space, Noah and Cosmic. They gave us all insights into what they are expecting and what’s going on from their point of view.

Space

For Space’s interview we heavily focused on what he thought about his position on the game. He also talked about the top 5 saying: “The top 5 is kind of interesting, as there are some players like Obanai who aren't usually up there.”

He then proceeded to say “Me personally, I think I'm doing better than I have for most games.”

I also really liked what he thought about his position, saying: “I think I could be doing better, as I got off to a good start, but it slowed down a few days ago. If that "slowdown" hadn't happened, I think I maybe could have been in the top 10. In short, yes I think I could be doing better.”

These were the main points of the interview, however he did express his support for removing everyone on 4 lives

Noah

I largely asked Noah about his alliances and his influence on the game. He said “Well I guess I do have some influence on the game, being top 5 and having quite a few allies and alliances… I prob wont use it for a while, and really other then that I dont have a plan yet”

I then asked him: “Do you have confidence going forward and in your alliances?” And his response was: “Well for alliances the guys in the top 5 i think there will be peace at least till the endgame, however probably the main worry is with some of my other alliances if a war starts again i could be caught in the middle which i do not want. 

However i would say i have confidence to be in a good place by the endgame, in all of the rounds i have managed to get to the endgame and so far this round i am doing well.”

This interview was very good and gave me a good insight into what he was doing.

Cosmic

Cosmic’s interview was largely about his first place spot and his allies. I asked him whether he expected this fortune and he replied: “NO! Not at all, I was inactive when the game started and I randomly logged in chess.com and to my surprise, the game had started. So I had already missed the first 1 day of the game, but after that the comeback was insane. Beating the likes of @carlsen and @mjtcan who are GOATed in hurt/heal yet sadly never won it-

I still can't believe I am at the 1st spot” He also stated that “My current strategy is to hold a strong alliance who can help me in exchange of their protection and heal back, and it was my strategy going into the game”. The final thing I would like to point out is what Cosmic was saying about his alliance and the active players, stating: “I do have faith in my allies. But not the active players(some) . Because if they hurt active players at this stage, it would lead to a war, which has happened before. And I think they might do it again, and hurting active players at this stage is obviously not good”

I liked his interview as it just showed the strategy that has led to the shocking outcome that is him being in 1st.

Conclusion

Thank you everyone for reading this edition. This was slightly shorter than last time but I expect more to happen in the coming weeks. Adios!