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First Contact - Chapter 301 (Hesstla)

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"If you fuck with the universe, it fucks back." - Pre-Diaspora Astrophysicist.
"I don't have to explain shit." - Universe-chan, Meme of 2nd Millennia Post-Diaspora
"If you mess with time, the universe brings in all the dicks. Dicks until the end of time." - Temporal Researcher, unknown era
"If God plays dice, they're loaded." - Alberto Einstein, Pre-Diaspora Physicist
"If you make the universe angry, it will crush you like a bug. The problem is, the Universe is always annoyed." - Unknown
"WHEEEE!" - Terran Descent Humanity
--------------------
There are always military theorists who will espouse their pet theories to anyone who will listen.
From those who said that tanks spelled the end of infantry to those who claimed drones spelled the end of tanks to those who stated that the nanoforge ended the need for logistics lines at all, everyone all has their pet theories.
Of course, they usually espouse them from the comfort of their lavish homes or from far back from the front lines where any soldier will tell you the one simple fact:
Kill the enemy, break his shit, and convince his population to end the fight.
Hesstla was a small planet, only 80% the size of Earth, originally populated by a small people only a meter and a half high compared to the Terran and Treana'ad and Rigellian two to three meters. They were covered in soft fur, they had little whiskers, they had long sensitive ears, and their legs had a hock joint.
The first few Terrans who met them said that they looked like someone taught a bunny to walk upright.
They were a peaceful people. When they had discovered the radio they had rapidly progressed to the Information Age and had been edging on the Atomic Age.
The Lanaktallan had arrived only two hundred years after the people of Hesstla had discovered the radio. The people of Hesstla had found out that their planet was claimed by a MegaCorp over a million years before the Hesstlan people had discovered fire.
To their credit, they tried to fight.
It took the Lanaktallan nearly twenty years to put down the last of the rebellion.
Four hundred years of debt peonage had followed. Crushing poverty, their resources exploited, their cities rebuilt for Lanaktallan comfort and aesthetics, their planet no longer alone.
Then had come the Precursor Autonomous War Machines.
They had come into the system, most of them damaged, fleeing a greater threat. They had destroyed the Lanaktallan military forces and seized the extraction and refining facilities. They had landed mechanical horrors to destroy those that lived on the modest little planet.
As the first machine landed the entire population of Hesstla had heard the roar.
HEAVY METAL INCOMING!
The foe that the Autonomous War Machines were fleeing was arriving.
The Hesstla, running and hiding, had frozen. A prey's response to the roar of a predator.
Then the predators had arrived.
HEAVY METAL IS HERE!
The Autonomous War Machines had screamed at the foe that was harrying them.
THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE!
The Hesstlan people had huddled down, scurrying to basements, storm shelters, underground parking garages, wherever they could take shelter surrounded by their own kind.
The predators screamed back.
THEN DIE ALONE!
In less than a week it was over. The AWM's that did not flee, pursued by the predators, were destroyed.
The Lanaktallan returned or left their own shelters, immediately demanding that the new people, the predators, leave the planet, that it was the Unified Neo-Sapient Council's property and property of the corporations.
The predators had said one simple line: "Make me."
The Lanaktallan had fled, promising dire retribution, telling the Hesstla people that the predators would destroy them.
Two years had passed. The damage was repaired. The Hesstlan people consulted about what they wished, and the Terrans had built several military bases and helped the Hesstlan people build orbital structures.
Then the newest ones had arrived.
Without warning.
But still with a scream that told the Hesstlan people where they stood.
YOU BELONG TO US!
The predators, those confusing chaotic primates, the Terran Descent Humans, and their allies, had raised up their voices as one to the newcomers.
EAT A DICK!
The fighting had been fierce. Atomic weapons had been used. Cities reduced to rubble. Farms burnt to the ground. The newcomers had swarmed Hesstla, a seemingly endless stream of enemies that had pushed the Hesstlan people to the brink.
The Terrans and their allies had pushed back.
Step by bloody step they pushed the newcomers, the Slorpies, back even as they destroyed them.
Four months of bitter fighting on the ground and, somehow, seventy-five years in orbit, the Terrans had thrown themselves at the enemy guns, had smashed their machines, had raised their voices in defiance.
EAT A DICK!
On the afternoon of the first month of the year, on the nineteenth day, at approximately 1750 Hours (Out of 28) Local Time, the last of the newcomers was finished off by a single shot from a pistol's accidental discharge.
The war...
...was over.
Not that the fighting was over. That raged on. The newcomers Autonomous War Machines kept fighting, even without supervision, attempting to open up a portal to bring in reinforcements. To harvest the living brains of the people of Hesstla in order to generate enough psychic energy to open a gate to allow more of the newcomer race, the Slorpies, to enter the battle and change the course of history.
The only problem was, for the first time in a hundred million years, the Slorpies were facing a race that did not crumble before psychic assaults. That replied to the cold logic of their psychic powers with feral screams of red hot rage.
In orbit, the fighting came to a slow stop. Even with the loss of the Black Fleet, the remaining Terran vessels managed to smash the enemy from the skies. On the ground, even with the loss of the Enraged Ones, the ground forces managed to rally, managed to deny the Slorpie machines landing zones, scattering their forces into packets and smidgens. To jawnconnor them into nothing more than smashed junk.
Not without a price.
There was valor and sacrifice. Too much to count.
From a Terran that gave his life to stop the Slorpie machines from getting into a shelter to the Telkan who stood defiant at the gate of a hospital base to the black Mantid fire team that had boarded a Slorpie command and control AWM to destroy the linked brains at the cost of their own lives.
There was tragedy too. Too much to count.
There always is in war.
But there is always hope. Perhaps small and flickering, but still hope.
-------------------
Elu watched as the door opened after the two-three-two knock. He had covered the shotgun with a cloth, making sure it was pushed back to where Nee couldn't reach it, when the knock had come. Still, it was close enough for him to grab if he needed to.
His sister, Dambree, came inside, quickly turning to close the door behind her and block out the snow and wind.
She was wearing heavy boots, thick coveralls, and a grav-skiiing mask to protect her face from the cold weather outside. She wore a thick leather belt with a heavy Terran pistol in a holster. In one hand she held winter tubers, in the other hand she had four fish on a lead. She moved into the kitchen, setting the fish in the sink and the tubers on the counter, then took off her thick gloves and stripped off her mask.
Elu saw the scar on his sister's head and winced. It had been a month since that thing had come in to attack them. It had somehow split his sister's skin open from right between her eyes, up over her head between her ears, and halfway down the back of her head. The scar was an angry upraised purple thing.
And a reminder of why they stayed in their little cabin.
"Gunka roots and fish for dinner tonight," Dambree said, taking the pistol out of the holster. "Lock," she ordered.
The telltales on the pistol switched from green to red.
"Can we have the roots fried?" Tru, Elu's sister, asked hopefully. "I like them best when they're fried."
"I know. That's up to you. It's your turn to cook dinner," Dambree said, taking off the belt. She moved back to the doorway. "It's snowing again. It's going to be a long winter."
The roar of jets went by overhead and off in the distance.
"Fried roots and baked fish," Tru said, standing up from the couch.
Mister Mewmew looked up from his little nest and made a plaintive complaining sound.
"Everyone's OK, Mister Mewmew," Dambree said, hanging up the mask, her gloves, and starting to strip off the coveralls.
Mister Mewmew laid back down in his nest, flashing a ":-)" on the display on his forehead.
Dambree went into the bedroom and changed out of her heavy outside clothing, putting on a dress and changing her shoes. She came back out and put her boots next to the door, the heavy leather belt acting as a belt or sash to her dress.
The pistol went back in the holster.
"How's Nee?" Dambree asked.
"Sleeping," Tru said, sharpening the knife and trying to decide whether she wanted to slice up the tubers first or clean and bone the fish.
"She's cranky," Elu said helpfully, moving over and sitting down on the couch. He reached over and petted Mister Mewmew, who began to rumble happily.
"I know. Growing does that to you," Dambree said. She opened the cold box and pulled out a fizzybrew, cracking it open and taking a long drink before sitting down. "Lake's almost completely covered with ice."
Elu felt a little despair. He missed his friends, missed school.
Missed his parents.
Mister Mewmew opened his eye, the other one always stayed closed, and rubbed his head against Elu's hand to ease the young Hesstlan's stress.
More jets roared by overhead.
"Where will we live when that stops?" Elu asked quietly. His sister Dambree didn't like to talk about the future, just saying none of it mattered till those noises stopped.
Dambree stared at the lip of the fizzybrew bottle for a long moment.
"I don't know," she sighed. She took another drink. "Part of me thinks I'll just stay right here, in this little cabin, for the rest of my life," she said softly. "People in charge will probably want us to leave, go to a camp or a foster home."
"I want to stay here, with you," Tru said, slicing open the belly of the first fish.
"I know," Dambree said. She gave another deep sigh and took a long pull off the bottle. "I want you to too."
Elu moved over and opened the curtain a tiny bit, staring outside. He could see the markings from the snowshoes his sister had worn on the snow but the tracks were starting to disappear as more snow came down to add more to the waist high snow.
At least it was white and not gray or black.
"Remember when we used to play in the snow," Elu said quietly.
"We'd make snowmen and throw snowballs," Tru said, smiling. "We'd go to Aunt Fenn's house and have a snowball fight with Ultrek and Ellaf and..."
Tru's smile vanished and she sniffled. "I miss Aunt Fenn."
"I know," Dambree said. "I do too."
"I wish we could go back to how it was before the gross things came," Tru said softly, staring at the fish as she sliced away the flesh.
"I know, but we can't. Babies wish," Dambree said. She got up, drinking down the last of the fizzybrew. She dropped the empty in the garbage and grabbed another. She sat back down. "Babies wish, we're not babies any more."
Mister Mewmew jumped down off the couch, staggering slightly, then limped over to Dambree, putting his front paws on her leg and meowing. Dambree lifted him up and set him in her lap, petting him with long strokes.
Mister Mewmew didn't walk or jump so well since the Slorpie had come in the house.
She could still remember it. The horror of not being able to move, her brother and sister crying out in pain and confusion. The way the Slorpie had lifted her up, had started to peel open her head, had touched her brain somehow with a long and disgusting tongue.
Dambree closed her eyes tightly and shuddered, then took a long drink off of her fizzybrew.
At least her headaches had slowly eased up.
She sat in the chair, feeling tired, closing her eyes. She sipped at her fizzybrew without opening her eyes, even when she heard Tru start to fry the fish and tubers. She wasn't as tired as she had been, but she still got tired easily and the effort to catch fish wasn't as easy as it had been.
Her eyes opened when she heard it. The sound of aircraft outside. It wasn't flying by but instead was getting louder, changing sounds.
Mister Mewmew looked up as Dambree stood up, setting Mister Mewmew on the ground as she looked at her siblings.
"In the basement, now," Dambree said. While her little brother and sister grabbed their emergency bags and hurried into the basement Dambree put a lid of the pan of frying fish and sliced tuber rounds and moved them off of the heat.
The roar changed pitch, getting softer, but not because it was moving away.
Nee bit her when Dambree grabbed her but Dambree ignored the pain, cradling the toddler as she hurried to the kitchen. Dambree picked up the shotgun and hustled after her brother and sister, closing the basement hatch behind her. She had tacked the carpet to it so it would hide the basement access so now all she could do was hope.
Mister Mewmew was held tightly by Tru as they sat quietly in the basement.
Dambree aimed the shotgun at the opening, moving her finger to take the shotgun from safety mode to killing mode. The button went from red to green, colored plastic instead of lights.
The door opened upstairs and Dambree heard Elu suck in his breath.
"Shh," Dambree said.
There was footsteps upstairs. Strange sounding footsteps.
"Someone's in the cabin," Tru whined.
"I know, shh," Dambree said.
There was the noise of a chair scraping on wood.
Dambree moved her finger from beside the trigger to the trigger, putting light pressure on it, pulling it tighter into her shoulder.
"There's a lot of them," Tru said helpfully.
"I know, shh," Dambree said. She could hear that both bedrooms were being searched as well as the front room and the kitchen. She heard the back door open, the little chime she'd rigged up ringing on the door and in the basement.
The footsteps stopped. Complete silence upstairs.
"I'm scared," Elu said, his voice tight.
"I know," Dambree said. She licked her dry lips and wished she could take a drink off her fizzybrew.
The hatch started to lift, hit the chain lock, and stopped.
Dambree's scar ached.
A black segmented and insect looking hand reached in, grabbed the chain, and yanked.
The chain popped free.
Dambree pulled the trigger.
The shotgun roared, blowing off part of the hatch.
"YOU WON'T HURT THEM!" Dambree screamed, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and neck as she pumped the action on the shotgun and stood up. She fired again, into the ceiling, blowing a hole as big as her fist in the wooden floor. She cocked it again, moving up to the base of the stairs.
"HOLY JESUS FUCKBALL SHITTING CHRIST!" someone yelled when she blew a hole in the floor on the other side of the hatch.
"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, STOP FUCKING SHOOTING!" another voice yelled.
Fuck? Dambree paused.
"Terran Army! Hold your fire," another voice said, much more calm.
"Terrans?" Dambree asked, still looking down the barrel at the top of the stairs.
"First Cavalry Division. One of our search and rescue flights saw the smoke from your cabin," the voice said. "How many of you are there?"
"Stop biting me," Tru told Nee.
"Four of us and Mister Mewmew," Dambree said. "I'm coming up. Anything funny and I'll blow you in half."
"I'll bet you will, kid," the voice said.
Dambree slowly walked up the stairs, her finger on the trigger. Six more shells, counting the one in the chamber. Extras are in the kitchen drawer and on a belt hanging next to the back door.
At the top she looked around.
Six large figures in black armor were in the room, three of them aiming heavy black rifles at her.
"You're Terrans?"
One of them tapped the side of his helmet and his black faceplate turned clear.
Dambree sagged slightly, lowering the shotgun. "You are."
"So you're the masked killer of Sparkling Lake?" the man asked.
Dambree nodded as she slowly walked over to the table, setting the shotgun down. She sat down and picked up her fizzybrew and took a drink.
"Yeah," she said. The exhaustion filled her again and she took another drink.
The Terrans looked at each other and the one she could see the face of, that she assumed was a male, looked at her. "We're here to save you."
She took another drink.
"I know," she said, getting up. She moved the pan back to the heat.
The human shuffled for a second. "Do you need assistance?"
Dambree took another drink as she slowly turned and looked at them, looked at the shotgun, then at the Terrans again.
A flight of jets went by overhead.
Dambree jerked her thumb up at the now receding jets. "As long as I hear that, we're staying here."
The human nodded slowly. "Is there anything you need? A doctor to look at that scar?"
Dambree shook her head, backing up to lean against the counter. "Mister Mewmew fixed it up."
"Food? Water? Anything?" the Terran asked.
Dambree shook her head. "No."
"Are you parents still alive?" the Terran asked.
Dambree shook her head. "No. They got shlorped."
"Any relatives alive?" he asked.
She shook her head again. "Probably not."
"I'm supposed to take any unaccompanied children to a refugee center," the Terran said carefully. Dambree wondered why his eyes seemed to glow a cold amber.
"You will try," Dambree said. She could hear the faint roar of approaching aircraft again. "I will not allow anyone to take away my siblings until," the jets roared overhead and receded. "Until I do not hear that any longer."
There was silence for a moment before the human nodded. "We'll drop you a survival pack."
The humans turned and started to leave. The one with the transparent visor waited until they were gone.
"The Terran who that pistol belonged to?" he asked.
"Slorpies got him. Sucked out his brain. He killed the Slorpie from inside of it. He gave me the pistol, told me to save the last four shots for my siblings and myself."
The Terran nodded. After a moment two Terrans came in carrying backpacks. They dropped them on the floor and left.
They hadn't turned their visors clear.
"Good luck, kid," the Terran said, his visor going opaque. "You might be here a long time."
Dambree took a long drink off of her fizzybrew as the Terran left, closing the door behind him.
"I know," she said to the empty cabin.
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submitted by Ralts_Bloodthorne to HFY [link] [comments]

Warzone Solo Strategy - My Tips for Kills and Success

Hi everyone, I have been playing almost exclusively warzone solos for a while now and I've noticed there is actually not much in the way of good strategy guides just for solos. I am a bit above average (KD 1.24) but far from the best player around, nevertheless I believe I have a great deal of experience in fine-tuning different solo strategies and seeing what works and what doesn't. In this post I will go through my process of what to do, when to do it, why I'm doing it and how I go about doing it. Gun-skill and situational awareness are two prerequisites that should be nailed down before thinking about macro-strategy, and can only be learnt by practice.
Note that the strategy below is probably not the best one for overall win-rate. That one would probably the do-10-recons-and-camp-the-final-circle strategy but if you like to play more aggressively getting lots of kills and dislike the camping playstyle, read on.
Step 1 - The Drop
The very first step to a successful game is a good drop. As with many things, you should be able to drop anywhere and make it work, so this is mostly about efficiently getting kitted up as soon as possible so you a) don't get into a position where you are encountering loaded-out players while you're stuck with ground loot and b) can get your loadout as soon as possible and start racking up kills on players that haven't yet got theirs.
Dropping locations vary on a scale of hot (many players landing in a condensed location) to cold (no other players landing there). The heat of a particular drop location depends on the following:
  1. Relative position to the flight path. Almost without fail the hottest drop locations are immediately below the point where the plane enters the map. These are the players who are in a mad rush to start looting and don't want to waste any time in the air. The middle of the plane's flight path is still pretty hot for much the same reason, just not so much as the beginning or end. The end point of the flight path is hot because this is where the AFK players get kicked out. Usually there are about five AFK players but also another five who want to grab some easy kills on them. Conversely, the longer the transverse distance from the flight path the colder it gets because it takes longer to get to, risks being shot while parachuting and is frankly a little bit tedious. That is not to say that it is necessarily a bad thing to do.
  2. Relative position to first circle. There does not appear to be much variation in heat within the first circle which is marked on the map - the centre is not particularly hotter than the edges. But the further you get outside the first circle you get the colder it becomes. The reason for this is obvious, you only have a couple of minutes to loot before the gas closes and if you are far outside the circle you will have to race back to safety.
  3. Scavenger contracts. These contracts can turn an area from a cold to a hot drop location, simply because most people realise that these are one of the best ways to begin a solo game.
  4. High-value locations. These locations will generally always be hot, more or less-so depending on where they are, relative to the flight path and first circle. High-value locations are places which have a lot of valuable loot in a small area and are consequently the quickest way to get decent ground loot and the money for a loadout. Examples include the train, superstore and passcode bunkers.
What is good to keep in mind is that a drop location will be hot for a reason - people want to drop in a certain place because it offers a certain advantage. Equally, a cold location will be cold generally because it offers little advantage. On the other hand, lots of competition in the early game is very risky. Even if you have great gun-skill it is very easy to get third-partied and therefore in half the games you drop hot you will get sent to the gulag within a minute or two. In solos the player count drops from 150 to 120 or less in about a minute - those 30 almost certainly dropped hot and paid for it. Cold drops, while taking longer to reach, will allow you more time to loot in peace and will generally give you enough space to seek out enemies on your own terms. However in the coldest spots you may struggle to find anyone, which isn't very fun at all.
As with most things in life, a compromise is often the best option. You should be able to handle the heat of two or three players dropping within 100m or you, so no need to go colder than that. Go much hotter and it becomes a toss-up if you'll survive into the top 100.
Obviously there's more to it than simply trying to pick a lukewarm drop position. You have to think about what you want to do upon landing. A contract is generally your answer. Bounties, while rewarding, aren't generally the best thing to get straight away. For a start, often your bounty target will still be in the air and will soon be hundreds of meters away. Alternatively they could have had a lucky drop and have found far better weapons than you. There is one situation however where I would recommend bounties straight away, and that is when you are the one who got a lucky drop and you were able to get a very good ground loot weapon very quickly. For example, with the season 6 ground loot origins even if the bounty target hides like a rat upstairs in a building, you can reliably rush them. Time is the great equalizer; after about five minutes you can assume that everyone has a good weapon. Before that time, if you have a powerful ground loot weapon then squeeze as many kills as you can. Recons are only good in my opinion if you go big on recons till the end (as I mentioned above). Supply runs are a bit meh, at the start you want to be focusing on looting items not buying stuff. That leaves us with scavengers.
While I did mention above that these contracts make for pretty hot locations, they do so for good reason. A scavenger contract only takes a minute or so to complete and rewards you with all the plates you'll need, a high chance of rare/legendary weapon and often enough cash to go straight for a loadout. Essentially, they reward you for what you would be doing anyway at this point in the game - looting. Furthermore, in season 6 the drop rate for plates decreased a lot - meaning that generic looting cannot guarantee you will get enough plates as quick as you will need them. With a scavenger, you avoid getting stuck without armour - suffice to say this is not a good position to find yourself.
Since scavengers are hot drops, you'll want to go for one on the colder end of the spectrum so you actually have a chance to reach it first and not die in the process. So long as you pick one that's not under the flight path you should be fine. Also, think contingencies. Think 'what am I going to do if I can't get that contract?'. This is why, ideally, you should go for a spot with a few scavengers in the vicinity so that if one gets taken there will still be others to grab. Ironically these locations are often less hot than places with just one scavenger - in such places there will likely be three or more players all converging on one place. Another tip is that some scavenger icons on the map are hard to see because they are under other icons or place names - many players would have missed those, leaving them all to you!
Alternatively, instead of going for a contract you could drop on the train. The train is pretty much a moving bunker's worth of loot but avoids the risk of getting trapped inside by another player. Admittedly, if the train is close to the flight path it can get really hot and therefore not worth the risk. If it is far away however it is possible to have the whole train to yourself. If you do then you often will get twice the loot of a scavenger contract in a fraction of the time; then jump off the train at a buy station and you could get your loadout within a minute of the drop. Obviously it is a lottery whether other players have the same idea as well and most of the time you will have to fight the other passengers. What's good about the train is that it is easy to bail and escape a bad gunfight if you feel you need to.
An ideal drop that leaves both strategies open is if you aim for a scavenger contract near to the train track and loot until the train approaches. Then you can quickly see if it is unlooted in which case you can jump on and do the honours, if it is currently being looted it is quite easy to kill the looter who, thinking they had the train to themselves, is focusing on looting. If the train has been looted and the looter has skedaddled, no worries! You still have a scavenger contract to keep you busy.
One final thing I will say about dropping is that it is preferable to drop fairly centrally in the first circle. The reason for this is that you'll want to have your free loadout drop deep in the circle which means it will stick around into the mid-late game. You will want this because if and when you get sent to the gulag and return you will want to be able to grab your loadout ASAP. The later in the game it is the harder and more dangerous cash is to find, making raising 10k a tough prospect.
To summarise, drop on a scavenger or the train (ideally both) in a medium-heat location in the centre of the circle.
Step 2 - Early Game (drop -> loadout)
Ok, so you've dropped on your scavenger and have started looting. Your priorities here are as follows:
  1. Getting a decent weapon. Doesn't need to be fantastic, just lose your pistol as quick as you can. Even the plain old grey Uzi will serve you well in the early game. As you loot further you can pick up better weapons.
  2. Getting plates. The one plate you need to get from your starting two to the full 250 health bar is critical. You don't want to enter any gunfights until you are fully plated - ideally with a few more in the pocket to sustain prolonged intermittent firefights. Don't panic if there aren't any plates around - just focus on completing the scavenger and you'll get all the plates you need.
  3. Getting cash. The ultimate aim for early game is saving up the 10k for a loadout. A scavenger won't generally give you enough cash on its own, so as you proceed from box to box make sure you open regular blue boxes en route to try and grab more cash.
Once you've completed the scavenger take a look at your cash stack. If you have 10k, then head to the nearest buy station and grab a loadout marker. If you are short of the 10k, you will need to either loot some more or grab a bounty. I'm partial to a bounty at this point if I have a decent weapon and I'm not in downtown (bounties in downtown are very difficult to pull off). A bounty will give you 6k in addition to whatever the target drops, so if you kill them you will have more than enough for a loadout as well as a self res or UAV.
Buying and grabbing your loadout is one of the most dangerous parts of the early game - the red smoke is difficult to hide and often snipers will wait for you to stand still for half a second while you open the loadout before they dome you. There are however ways to mitigate the danger. One tactic is to run off into the woods or mountains on the edge of the map and drop the marker there. This method is fairly safe (so long as you make sure you're not being followed) but it takes a while to get there, if you're in the centre of the map it can be unfeasible. Another method is to find a building with an accessible roof, clear it of any enemies, and drop your marker on the ground floor. This will both hide most of the smoke and put the loadout on the roof, hopefully avoiding people sneaking up on you while you grab it. Note that this latter method is vulnerable to snipers, so avoid using buildings that are close to even higher buildings (e.g. downtown) and remember to go prone while opening the loadout.
This brings me to the question that is always on the mind of warzone players - what loadout should I get? The only rule I would stick to is to make sure you have the ghost perk. You are playing at a massive strategical disadvantage, especially in mid to late-game, if you don't run ghost. Overkill may be tempting, but at this point you should have a good enough ground loot weapon to keep on hand along with whatever loadout weapon you pick. Even if you don't have anything decent, just go with an all-comers weapon like an assault rifle. Honestly, it's not worth being the one guy that everyone will be making a bee-line too when they start popping UAVs in mid-game.
Since you'll only be getting one primary weapon in your loadout, you ought to pick whatever complements your best current ground loot weapon. As a rule of thumb, you always want something to cover mid-range (assault rifles, long range SMGs, LMGs) and then you can pick a long-range (snipers) or short-range (SMGs, shotguns) weapon depending on where the circle is moving and/or your playstyle. The northern part of the map has a lot of open spaces that reward sniping, while in the more urban areas you will want something to handle close-quarter encounters. Personal preference is of course a major factor - don't pick a sniper if you hate sniping. If you like rushing buildings then don't leave without an MP5 or good shotgun.
In season 6 there are good ground loots weapons in every category. When you head to buy your loadout, have a think of what you want to keep and what you'll want to pick up (make sure to do the thinking before you throw down the loadout marker, you want to pick up the loadout as quick as humanly possible after that). Below is a list of what I would recommend getting depending on what you have on hand, in terms of ground-loot:
The other things to consider are perks, tacticals and lethals. Everyone has their favourites, but for solos I recommend the following:
Once you have picked up your loadout, remember to pick up whatever ground loot weapon you decided to keep (if any, you may prefer a launcher secondary to handle vehicles) and high-tail it out of the area as quickly as possible. You want to put distance between you and the red smoke which has probably caught the eye of some thirsty players who are now running there trying to catch an easy kill. You could wait and try and kill some of these players, but consider they could be coming from any direction and you will have to keep an eye on 360 degrees of approach.
At some point, 13s before the gas reaches the first circle IIRC, you will get a free loadout. Leave it alone unless you're coming back from the gulag. For one, it will likely be camped and become a deathtrap, secondly you want to leave your future self a lifeline if you go to the gulag and redeploy. Again, this is why it is helpful to be near the centre of the circle when the free loadout spawns so that you can take advantage of it even if you redeploy late-game.
Optional Step 2.5 - Gulag
Fairly often in the early game you will get unlucky or outplayed and get sent to the gulag. It happens to everyone and is far from the end of the game. I would say that at least half of my wins have come after returning from the gulag. I can't tell you how to win the gulag - that comes down mostly to gun-skill and muscle memory. If you lose the gulag, it's not the end of the world, just play again. Now let's say you kick your opponents ass and you redeploy, you should aim straight for the free loadout if it has spawned yet. If not, drop on a scavenger and go through the early-game process of getting plates, weapons, cash etc. Then grab the loadout when it arrives. Doing this is dangerous especially if many players' loadouts drop together, but so is waiting around without your loadout. Either approach as soon as it drops and grab it before people settle in to camp it, or encircle the loadout and clear out potential camping spots before grabbing it.
Optional step 2.6 - Bunkers
If at any point in the game (except perhaps late game) you find a red access card, drop everything and head to the nearest card bunker. There are four I believe; dam, military base, hills and prison. Especially since season 6 these are incredibly valuable. Now there will always be, right at the back of the bunker, a 'super-legendary' item. This could be a loadout drop marker (a.k.a. 10k cash), durable gas mask, advanced UAV, minigun, foresight or juggernaut. All are incredibly useful (except perhaps the minigun) and potentially game-winning, especially the juggernaut and foresight. If you pick up a juggernaut it is very hard to lose in solos. It feels like a cheap win, but a win is a win. Foresight is also incredibly broken, it's gives you the exact position of the final circle including all the circle movement. When I talk about the late-game I emphasise how important circle movement is to victory, and this gives you all that intel on a silver platter. If you fancy a relaxing game it also tells you exactly what house to go and have a nap in until the late game. Even if you get none of these items, the sheer amount of cash you can loot from the bunker can mean you'll never need to worry about money for the rest of the game.
Be careful getting to the bunker though. By all means take a vehicle, just don't park it right outside the door. That's just asking for an uninvited guest to crash the party. Park a hundred meters or so away and take the rest by foot, making sure nobody sees you go in. If you're trapped in there by someone waiting at the door there's no other way out.
Step 3 - Mid game (loadout -> top 20)
Now this is where the fun begins! When you have your loadout you could pick a building and sit in there like a loser. What is much more rewarding is to go out hunting. Players could be anywhere, just wandering around aimlessly is not the key to a high-kill game. You need targets to aim for and approach strategically like a tiger. How can you find targets? You can see players visually and follow them, which is a cheap and effective method but unreliable, furthermore if they have decent situational awareness they will spot you back very soon after you do, leaving a limited time window to attack with the element of surprise.
Another way to locate targets is to head in the direction of unsuppressed fire, which will place a temporary red dot on the mini-map. If this happens close to you then you have a prime opportunity to third-party someone and get a cheap kill, but if you have to travel a few hundred meters it becomes a less reliable way of getting kills. Consider that the player who has been firing their unsuppressed weapon is fully aware that they have just broadcasted their location and will be quickly relocating after the fight if they have any game sense. Furthermore, many players will likely have the same idea as you and will flock like moths to a flame hoping to get a few juicy kills, this can often create a chain reaction of third-party attacks as people arrive to intervene in the unsuppressed gunfight, who fire more unsuppressed shots thereby attracting more people. This generally ends badly for 90% of those involved, so best avoided if you can.
There are only two methods to reliably locate targets - UAVs and bounty contracts. The former costs money, while the latter awards it. However, the crucial difference is that someone highlighted by an UAV is completely unaware that they have been targeted and that you are heading straight for them. Granted, they will hear the 'UAV overhead' announcement but that is so common in solos that it doesn't have much meaning - in mid-game solos you can reliably assume that there is always at least one UAV overhead from someone. In contrast, when someone is chosen as a bounty target they know that they specifically have been singled out and how close their hunter is. Most players' reaction to this is to just camp in a building for the three minutes until the time expires. If you have a decent short range SMG or shotgun you should be able to rush a building in which your target is hiding, but it is no guarantee of success. Remember, just because you have a bounty target it does not mean you have to attack - if they're hiding upstairs in a house with an origin and claymores on the stairs, it's not a fight you have much chance of winning. Move along.
In short, if you have the money buy a UAV and hunt with whatever intel it gives you. Ideally the kill you get with that intel will fund your next UAV purchase and you will snowball round the map racking up the kills. Remember if there are no UAV targets near you and it runs out of fuel before you reach the red dots, you can try and pinpoint them with your heartbeat sensor. Think of it like a mini-UAV. I should probably mention at this point that if you have left over money from buying a UAV, pick up a self-res if you can. 80% of the time they won't help but you'll feel incredibly grateful for the 20% of times they do. Of course, if there is a fire sale you might as well grab one for free.
If your snowball of death grinds to a halt; maybe you ran out of non-ghosted players in the vicinity or you ran out of money by killing too many poor players, now is a good time to pick up a bounty target to get the snowball going again.
A third way to find targets more reliably than just wandering around, but without the risk of bounties or the cost of UAVs is to employ the famous 'pinwheel rotation'. Popularised by youtuber Icemanisaac, this is where you hug the gas while it is stationary and then rotate into the next circle at a 45 degree angle to the gas when it closes in. The logic for this strategy is that you will catch players moving into the inner circle directly perpendicular to the gas, including players flushed out of their camping spots by the encroaching gas. What's more, you don't need to worry so much about your outside flank since that will be covered by the gas. I find this strategy works best mid to late game when the gas isn't moving as fast and the amount of non-ghosted players diminishes the value of UAVs. Be sure to grab a gas mask if you're using this strategy as you will occasionally need to dip into the gas. Note that you can use UAVs as you pinwheel, giving you extra intel (e.g. if the UAV picks up someone in a building on the edge of the gas, you can expect them to be flushed out where you will be waiting for them).
Using our toolkit of UAVS, bounties, unsuppressed fire and the pinwheel rotation, you should be able to grab a good amount of kills in the mid-game.
Step 4 - Late game (top 20 -> Warzone Victory)
Generally around the top 20 the real end-game begins. Now the value from UAVs is diminished, since non-ghosted players are probably dead and in any event you don't have the liberty anymore to start running around everywhere looking for kills. Bounties aren't worth it anymore because cash becomes more or less irrelevant at this point - there's probably only one or two buy stations left and they're most likely camped. If you come across a bounty you can take it just for the extra intel it gives you, just be very careful about going after them. At this point in the game you need to play a lot more cautiously. I would say camping is fine at this stage - you've had your fun already.
If you can secure a house in the final circle then that's ideal, what is more likely is that the recon-ers have already secured all the nice camping spots. If you have a good MP5 or shotgun you could rush the building but its a risky prospect and liable to third parties joining in the fun. If you are stuck outside in the cold then, if it's an open area, your best bet is probably to continue to pinwheel in as the gas closes, albeit at a slower, more cautious pace. If the final circle is a more urban area like downtown or promenade, you can slowly but surely proceed into the circle making sure to check all your corners, make maximum use of cover and dial the situational awareness up to 11. You can still get quite a few kills this way as often players won't hear your approach if you don't run.
At the final circle it all comes down to gun-skill, stealth and a healthy dollop of luck. In the top 3, try to third party the other two. Nine times out of ten the two players who start the gunfight lose to the player who waited and finished off the victor. Of course, you often don't have the luxury of picking your fights. When the circle starts moving, this is where the RNG can give you or steal away the win. If the circle moves to your side then it's simply a matter of waiting for the gas to deliver your opponent(s) into your arms. If not, then the opposite will apply. The odds will be against you in this case but it's by no means a done deal. Here your only chance of survival is superior gun-skill.
And there you have it! The entire process from dropping to winning the game. This took way longer than I thought it would but I hope I've given some useful tips. I would love for you guys to offer any thoughts on my strategy and stuff you do that also works well.
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Wizard Tournament: Chapter 13

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      Trundle took a moment to catch his breath and wipe the blood from his hand onto his leather coat. He did not move to leave the field though. He looked to Maeve and she shook her head in a firm no.
      “Giryuoru! We’ve talked about this,” Maeve’s enhanced voice called out across the field.
      A lump of mud the size of a small child, rose up out of the ground. “My swamp,” A tiny voice called sullenly.
      “Giryuoru, no. Bad. You lost fair and square. You have to go now. You can try again next year.”
      The little mud creature ducked its head and slithered off the field. Draevin was just glad to see all the crazy gear-heads run after him. It was only after the swamp elemental had left the field that Trundle received the all clear to leave himself.
      The guards who had escorted Trundle to the field made no move to return him to his chains—it seemed he’d served his penance for the demon-fiasco during registration. Draevin saw his opportunity to get some more answers out of the little gnome. He could spend the rest of the tournament scratching his head over who might have tried to have him eliminated in that little attack, or he could just ask the one person who already knew the answer.
      “…taking advantage of him,” Peter was saying to Sylnya. Draevin realized they had been having a conversation without him and tried to catch up.
      “Well he agreed to the arrangement. You think they force him into that metal box?” Sylnya said. “Just trust me, this is the best arrangement for all parties involved. Gear-you doesn’t try to attack the protectorate anymore, his crazy fans don’t protest, and his size is kept in check each year.” Sylnya motioned with her head down toward the back end of the field where the elemental was absorbing the splattered mud all the gear-heads had collected. Each time he splashed over a dirty fan their body came away clean and his size increased modestly. “Mostly in check anyways,” Sylnya conceded.
      “Yes yes, Giryuoru used to be very annoying,” Draevin agreed. “So anyways, I’m going to go get some answers out of Trundle now that they finally let him out. I’ll be back in a minute.”
      Sylnya waved goodbye and went back to her conversation with Peter. “Why are his fans so excited about…” he heard Peter asking as he left the booth. That was definitely not a conversation he wanted to get involved in. He could already imagine Sylnya’s yellow blush.
      On his approach to the stairs that led down to the arena floor Draevin ran into Grrbraa, the werebeast contestant they’d met at The Pot this morning. Grrbraa’s snout was snuffling against the ground but when Draevin approached he raised it to chest level and gave him a sniff. “You smell like the human wizard. Do you know where ally-Peter is?” the muscly black beast asked him.
      “I… do?” Draevin asked. Had Korack been telling the truth when he’d said the same thing yesterday?
      “Yes,” Grrbraa answered. He sniffed again as though he needed to be sure. “It is a weak scent. I wish to speak with him about the plan he mentioned. Is he available?”
      Plan? “Uhh, yeah probably.” Draevin pointed back the way he’d just come. “Take a left at the intersection, then it’s booth number three.”
      The beast muttered a little to himself and counted off three claws. “Yes. I understand,” he said. “Thank you for your help.” Grrbraa padded off in the appropriate direction with most pedestrians giving him a wide berth.
      The interaction left Draevin confused. An overly polite werebeast making plans with a human… he couldn’t for the life of him understand what the two of them might have in common.
      He brushed his concerns aside and focused on the task at hand. Figuring out who was behind that clumsy attempt on his life seemed more immediately relevant. He still thought it was probably Zolt, despite what Peter had said. It wasn’t as though Zolt couldn’t have consulted a seer to figure out who he was going to be matched against in the first round.
      Draevin reached the tunnel that led down to the ground floor of the arena. Trundle was already almost to the exit. The little gnome was looking sickly-pale and was breathing heavily. He stopped a few paces from the end and leaned against the wall. “Draevin,” he said simply and waved him closer.
      This section of the arena was closed to the public, but the guards on duty recognized Draevin and let him through. Draevin reached the gnome and saw that sweat was beading around his forehead in addition to the panting. “You should really see a healer about all that blood loss, you know,” Draevin told him.
      “Can’t. Restore…” Trundle held up a hand for a moment and took some deep breaths. “Pact blood can’t be magically restored. You think I wouldn’t try that?”
      “Sorry you’ve just…” Draevin eyed the gnome up and down. He rested his eye noticeably on the hand covered in crusty blood. “Well, you’ve looked better.”
      “What do you want, Draevin. I didn’t think we were this friendly.”
      Draevin glanced back the way he had come at the nearby guards but decided they were far enough away that the ambient noise of the audience moving around during intermission would keep them from hearing anything. He lowered his voice anyway just to be safe. “I was hoping now that you’re out of custody you could tell me who tried to kill me yesterday.”
      Trundle raised the eyebrow over his one good eye. “I didn’t know you had those kinds of enemies, Draevin.”
      “Neither did I, now can you just tell me who it was?”
      “Why d’you think I know?”
      Draevin sputtered in disbelief. “Because you told me! Remember how your patron said those demons were under pact from another contestant?”
      Trundle scratched his beard. “They were? You talked to my patron?”
      “No, you told me they told you that.”
      The red-haired gnome shook his head. “No. I never said that. When could I ‘ave done that, you suppose? I been locked up since those damn imps chased me out of Hell.”
      Nothing about his body language said Trundle was being deceptive and Draevin couldn’t think of a reason he would have to lie about this so suddenly. “You really don’t remember? You talk to any cerebromancers lately?” Draevin wondered how Zolt could have hired a cerebromancer to wipe Trundle’s memories so soon. He didn’t know the guy was so well-connected.
      “You forget the part where I spent last night in the Guild holding cell? Of course I fuckin’ didn’t! I only talked to my damn guards and none of them are mind mages.”
      “Alright alright,” Draevin said. “Let me think… there has to be someone else that can confirm—” He snapped his fingers. “Your patron!”
      “You know Chaska’nal?”
      “No, but you do. Whoever messed with your memories couldn’t have gotten to your patron. Just go talk to them again and then tell me what they say.”
      Trundle started picking dried blood off his hand and dropping the flakes in a pouch. “And I’m gonna do this for you, why exactly?”
      “Obviously I’ll pay you for your time.”
      “Fifty,” Trundle said without looking up from his disgusting task.
      “Silver? Sure. That seems fair.”
      “Gold obviously.”
      “What? It will only take you two minutes!”
      Trundle put his pouch away. The hand he’d slashed open in his fight looked clean of dried blood aside from a puckered scar that slashed across his palm. “You want me to go waste Chaska’nal’s time asking about something a confused elf told me? Tell you what; if money’s a problem for you why don’t you just pay in blood.”
      Draevin pulled out his pouch. “Fifty gold you said? I think I might have that much here…”
      “No. I changed my mind,” Trundle’s low voice grumbled. “It’s blood or nothing. I can’t be wasting my own blood on this stupid shit.”
      “Surely you could just pay some commoner for some of theirs. I bet you could get buckets for fifty gold.”
      “Nah. You’ve stepped in the Conflux before. She likes the taste of Champion’s blood. I can’t buy that from anyone.”
      Draevin wasn’t sure if he believed that or not, but he was out of options for the time being. “Ok fine, but you can only take what you absolutely need.”
      “Of course,” Trundle agreed easily enough. He pulled a dagger from his belt and beckoned Draevin forward. “Hold out your hand.”
      He was sure to look away as he did so, but the cold bite of metal was still enough to cause him to suck in a breath. “Tell me when you’ve got enough.”
      “Flex your fingers. Open and close… yes, just like that.”
      Draevin felt warm blood slowly pulsing across his palm. He let it continue for a short minute before getting uncomfortable. “You don’t think maybe that’s—Hey!” He finally looked at the wound and found Trundle was collecting the blood in a glass bottle. A glass bottle that nearly looked full! He pulled his hand back. “I’ve never seen you use anything close to that much blood on one of your portals!”
      Trundle didn’t even have the courtesy of appearing mollified. “Fine fine.” He corked the bottle and placed it into an inside pocket of his dirty leather jacket. “That’s probably enough,” he agreed.
      “You said you’d only take what you absolutely needed,” Draevin complained. He conjured up a strip of icy thread with a wave and wrapped his hand in it. It did nothing to soak up the blood but it was comfortingly cool on the hot wound.
      “You said that, not me,” Trundle countered. He shooed Draevin off with a flick of his wrist. “I’ll come find you later if she says anything. If you don’t see me you can assume she just yelled at me for wasting her time.”
      “If I don’t hear from you I’ll find you,” Draevin promised him before departing.
      At the mouth of the tunnel a red-skinned little goblin was trying to get past the guards and they were having none of it. “This only leads to the arena,” a guard explained in a slow voice, “the audience uses the big stairs over there.”
      “Me Boom’ba!” the goblin screeched back angrily. “Boom’ba fight go boom boom. Wish for boom stick.”
      The other guard tapped his partner on the shoulder. “That’s actually one of the contestants,” he explained to his purple-robed companion. “We might want to let him by.”
      “You’re kidding. A goblin?” The guard looked Boom’ba over closely before giving in. “All right little fella. Just head through the tunnel, the guards on the far side will tell you what to do.”
      Draevin smiled at the little creature. “Good luck out there,” he told it. He always rooted for contestants he thought he could beat.
      The goblin barred a set of sharp fangs at him and hissed. “I boom you too, ice boy!” It padded off down the tunnel, only stopping to sling more threats at Trundle as it passed him.
      “Vicious little creatures,” the guard complained.
      “They can be,” Draevin agreed.
      When he got back to the booth it looked like they were ready to announce the next match. Peter was gone.
      “Hey Drae, where’d you get off to?” Sylnya greeted him.
      “I tried to ask Trundle about that demonic attack that was supposedly targeted at me. He didn’t remember it.” He held out his bloodied hand and dissolved the make-shift bandage of ice he’d wrapped it in. “Think I could get a Healing Lotus from you?”
      “Ouch,” Sylnya said. “How’d you get that?”
      “Didn’t you hear the part where I asked Trundle for a favor?”
      “Of course.” Sylnya briefly weaved some fingers together and a pale pink flower started to bloom from the spot on her chest just above where her heartseed was. “Did you see if Peter was on his way back yet? He went off with that werebeast Grrbraa. I think he’s going to miss the next match.”
      Before Draevin could confirm that he hadn’t seen the human Maeve started the announcement for the next round.
      “Deekek is a hawk-kin aeromancer representing Mayor Uureek from Seataak. He is carrying the Mirror Shield of Ketak’an.” Deekek held up his mirror shield and flapped his speckled brown wings proudly for everyone to see and the crowd gave a cheer. Maeve continued. “His wish is to create a nation for Hawk-kin to call home. Deekek wants everyone to know that he fights for his family and to prove that hawk-kin were not a wasted wish.”
      Deekek received polite applause but nothing too crazy. Draevin clapped once out of instinct before his hand angrily reminded him of the abuse it had recently suffered.
      “Here.” Sylnya handed him her Lotus. He sucked down the sugary-sweet nectar and felt the pleasant itch of his wound closing up. “And scoot over,” she added. “In case Peter comes back.”
      “Deekek’s opponent this round is the goblin named Boom’ba,” Maeve continued. This was apparently the wrong thing to say, as the crowd promptly interrupted with a chorus of boos.
      “I just met that thing,” Draevin commented.
      “Oh yeah?”
      “Angry as all Hell. I wished him luck and he threatened to ‘boom’ me, whatever that means.”
      “Boom’ba hails from the foothills of Kundreil and has brought as his item a ‘Boom Stick’ he found. He is unsponsored and his wish is for two ‘Boom Sticks.’ Boom’ba wants everyone to know that he is Boom’ba, he uhh… makes the boom booms.” Maeve was sounding uncomfortable quoting the nonsense the goblin had recorded with the registrar. “And if you fight him he’ll make you go boom boom.” While Maeve announced him, Boom’ba wandered a few steps out of his box and started picking his nose with the wand he was carrying rather than presenting his item like most contestants. The crowd laughed at this, then laughed even more at the comments he left. Their earlier distaste with a goblin contestant seemed to be forgotten for the moment.
      Maeve waited an appropriate time and eased the crowd to silence. When they calmed down more the bell chimed and the match began.
      Immediately Deekek leaped into the air and his wings carried him high above the ground. He started some hand movements. Though he was too far away to see what the hawk-kin was doing, Draevin could see the intermittent flash of the shield that was strapped to his arm as it moved.
      Boom’ba didn’t even seem to know what was going on. He was looking toward the spot where the bell chime had come from and was still picking his nose. Some nearby fans pointed enthusiastically to the sky and shouted at him.
      Deekek fired off his first spell and it was a gust of wind. It buffeted the little goblin, but between the complete lack of shoes and the sharp claws it had for feet it was able to hold on. Boom’ba finally looked to the sky where his opponent’s attack had come from: he pointed his little wand and unleashed Hell.
      A bright pinpoint of light appeared in the air over the field briefly followed by a blinding flash. The arena’s wards shimmered a deep purple for just a moment—then shattered. The bench Draevin sat on jostled him like a bucking horse and a sharp pain split through his skull.
      He felt himself tumbling through space before everything went black.
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Hindsight is 2020: #1 - Firth of Fifth

from Selling England by the Pound, 1973
Listen to it here!
Here at the end, it’s only appropriate to go back to the beginning. Well, a beginning, at any rate. You see, streaming internet radio was a relatively new service during my college years. I’m not talking about simply pulling up a local radio station’s website and streaming its actual live radio feed, mind you, but the idea of subscription-based, curated music; radio stations made especially for an individual. We tend to take that sort of thing for granted now, and there are a number of options, but for a student in the mid-2000s, it was a novelty. I don’t recall exactly how I heard about the particular service I used, but I made a free account and decided to try it out.
I don’t know exactly what I expected. I imagine that I didn’t expect much at all, frankly. The idea of “you say you like this one song so we’ll give you other songs you like” felt a little like “yeah, right” to me. But modern live radio wasn’t proving interesting to me anymore, and I liked the idea of being exposed to new things, so I figured, why not? The first thing I was asked after confirming my new account was to “create a station,” and to do that I had to select a song or artist I enjoyed so it could find more things like that. That was a really interesting question I hadn’t quite been prepared to answer. What do I want to hear more of? I like Journey, but do I want a radio station dedicated to arena anthems? I like The Beatles, but will a 60s rock station have any staying power for me? I like a bit of 80s and 90s pop, but will that actually expose me to much of anything new?
In the end, I made what in hindsight was one of the most important musical decisions of my life. I told the service to build me a station around the song “Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding” by Elton John. My parents both liked Elton John and I’d heard a fair bit of his music, liking almost all of it. Great piano rock stuff. Yet this song had captured me in a different, deeper way. For one thing, it's eleven minutes long, and the first half of it is entirely instrumental. It runs through multiple moods with an arrangement covering a lot of different sounds...it is, in a word, “progressive,” though that wasn’t really a word in my musical vocabulary at the time. And then the second half was this exquisitely-arranged jam of a song; thumping piano rock, melodic guitar solos, intricate bass work, outstanding vocal harmonies, and again a range of sounds and moods. In my mind, this was a totally unique thing in the world of music, utterly captivating start to finish. “Give me more songs like that. Do any even exist?”
It took a bit of time. Through selectively “liking” or “disliking” tracks, I was refining the station’s perception of my musical taste and driving it towards discovery of other music in this vein, though I got a wide variety of other great stuff along the way as well. My routine at the time was that I’d boot up World of Warcraft, mute the game, turn on this station, and do some mindless in-game tasks so I could just enjoy the music. At one point, a song came on that I didn’t recognize, though I knew Phil Collins’ voice instantly. The station listed it as “Old Medley (Live)” from Genesis. I wasn’t too keen on hearing live versions of things, since I traditionally preferred studio versions unless I was physically at the concert myself, but this was new, and I’d always liked Genesis growing up. Knew all their hits and could recognize a few album cuts as well here or there, so eh, I’ll leave it on. At nearly 20 minutes long, this was bound to have something interesting.
The opening bit was pretty good even though it didn’t leave a tremendous impression on me right away, but then came “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”, and hey, I know that one! Then another bit I didn’t recognize, though it sounded pretty strong, with a big “Wow” moment at the end. Then off into a keyboard solo...that’s pretty good I guess, cool drumming too. And that’s when my musical life really changed. Because after that keyboard solo wound down, I heard a guitar solo that made me stop everything else I was doing and just kind of go, “Whoa….” for a while. The medley went on into something else and touched lightly on a number of other songs I half-recognized, but I was still in that guitar solo in my head. I had to know what in the world I’d just heard. So I pulled up a browser and searched for this “Old Medley” to find its component parts, eventually learning that this section was from something called “Firth of Fifth”.
“Well that’s a ridiculous name.”
Tony: There's a river in Scotland called the Forth, and the word for a delta or inlet in Scotland is a “firth.” So, it's known as the Firth of Forth. It's sort of north of Edinburgh. So, I thought, forth, fifth, you know, “Firth of Fifth.” We're talking about the early '70s here, so it was a little bit pretentious, in a way. But it's quite a fun title. It's totally untranslatable, of course, so I'm always getting these questions from Germans and French people asking, "What does it mean?" It sounds more profound than it is because it was supposed to be just a slight joke, really, as a title. 1
So I hunted for the song. Back then YouTube wasn’t replete with music and I didn’t really have any ability to pull it up on-demand anywhere, but somehow I managed to locate this track somewhere and play it in its entirety. And man, it was something else.
Check out this monstrosity of time signatures. 2/4 into 4/4 that’s actually more like 16/16 back to 2/4 into 13/16 into some 15/16 stuff as well? I’d heard this stuff in the synth solo in the medley, but with the full band playing it didn’t really register. Now, hearing this stuff on only grand piano in the song's intro, it was just this overwhelming feeling of “WHAT?!”
Tony: I just played it on a piano. It was kind of difficult at the time. I remember in the studio we were in, it was very difficult to get the noise of the pedal out of the way, so I tried to play it without the pedal, which was a bit difficult to do because it's not the easiest thing to play. But it was something I'd written and developed. I had this sort of arpeggio idea that I was working with. I'd written another piece which used a similar feel, which we never ended up using, and I just had this section of it, which I then developed and made this piece of. I thought it worked really well as a piano piece on its own, and then it worked well with an arrangement, as well. So, it's just one of those things. With Genesis, we just did what appealed to us, really. We didn't worry too much how other people were going to respond to it. It was a fun thing to do. It's a difficult thing to play live because, at the time, I didn't have a real piano. I tried to play it on the electric piano and that was quite difficult. I don't think it ever really sounded very good, but it was fun to try. 1
It’s a shame that a mix of sound quality concerns with logistic issues prevented this intro from being played live until it was too late in their careers to do the song in full anyway, because that piano intro carries a LOT of water for setting the stage for everything to come. At this point I knew that I’d likely hear this absurdly complex melody again in synth form, and I knew that guitar bit was going to show up later, but I had no idea how I’d get there. Yet I had a sense from hearing this piano intro that the rest of the song was going to measure up just fine.
The piano intro concluded, but by “concluded” I really mean “the band exploded in on a huge chord” as Peter began singing the opening lines. “Oh, that’s right, Peter Gabriel was in this band, wasn’t he?” The lyrics he was singing didn’t seem to mean much to me. Some decent turns of phrase like “And so with gods and men // the sheep remain inside their pen // though many times they’ve seen the way to leave.” That’s a good bit! What it means I couldn’t really tell you, but it certainly sounded profound at the time! And these words were being well-delivered by a voice with an unusual quality to it that made the whole thing somehow more mysterious. Even so, there didn’t seem to be much tying these various phrases together. And…did he just say “cancer?”
Tony: We were a bit stuck for an idea for a lyric. We started off writing very simply about a river, then the river became a bit more...a river of life. You know, it’s quite allegorical and I don’t think it’s our most successful lyric. I’ve always been a bit disappointed with the lyric on that. It’s a great piece of music but it’s a pity we didn’t get a better lyric. I don’t think it says very much. We tried a bit too hard. It just didn’t come, whereas the other one we wrote on the album, “Cinema Show”, we were much more pleased with. There we had a specific idea to aim for. 2
Nevertheless, it’s all pretty compelling, and oooh, “undinal” is a fun word. Sirens’ cry? So is this song actually nautically themed then? I think I can dig that. Oh hey, a flute! That was unexpected. This is really good, really haunting. Pretty and understated but totally entrancing. Oh like a siren! I get it now!
Tony: With “Firth of Fifth” I was pretty pleased with that at the time, I have to say. Because you had lots of bits in it… My favorite bit really is what was a flute solo. And I’d really just seen it done like that, just flute and piano. 3
Steve: As the melody starts to move and it starts to weave upwards and duck downwards...it’s got lots of bendy notes in it. Slightly oriental sounding, slightly sort of French-impressionist-Erik-Satie-type melody stuff. Originally Tony played it on piano and I thought, “It’s a very interesting sketch, but we need to flesh this out.” When you first hear that melody, Peter Gabriel plays it on flute along with the piano… I think there’s something very poignant about the melody. I don’t know...it seems to touch people. In fact my mother, whenever she comes to a gig, she says, “It always makes me cry, that thing.” 4
Then this piano bit again picking up tempo - man, this is really getting going now! And then, ahhhhh I know this! It’s that synth solo from the medley! But man, I hadn’t heard just how crazy that drumming is before, or those oscillating guitar sounds. This is really something else!
Steve: And then you get a recapitulation of the solo piano thing that starts the thing out; it becomes a synth solo. Fast and furious drum and bass happening from Mike and Phil. 4
Tony: [This album was] the first time I ever used a synthesizer as well. So it was quite a big move for me to have this instrument, this ARP Pro Soloist thing, which was quite a simple monophonic synthesizer, but it had quite a nice little range of tones on it. And it was one you didn’t have to do any programming; just preset sounds, which was nice for me. Obviously “The Cinema Show” is very much based on that, but I used it throughout the album on little bits and pieces and it was a really interesting addition to the armory. In these days it was organ, piano, and Mellotron. To have something alternative to play lead on like this opened up possibilities for me… When the synthesizers came in it just opened up the keyboard world so much. 5
But oooh, hearing all this crazy synth solo stuff means that guitar solo has got to be coming up next, right? Right???
Tony: I think it’s the most successful all-round song on Selling England by the Pound. It’s a very romantic song. It builds to a climax with the guitar solo - which recalls an earlier flute theme - with masses of Mellotron. 2
Peter: Steve definitely I think gained in confidence and “Firth of Fifth” is very much a Tony piece, in terms of how it started and how it built. But Steve did let loose in I think probably the best way up to that point, at the end. 5
Steve: I tend to come alive when I think of Selling England... I think I was able to infuse that album with the enthusiasm of a player and as an interpreter on, for instance "Firth Of Fifth". Basically the whole song was Tony's baby from beginning to end, apart from the lyric which he co-wrote with Mike. [Yet] the thing that people mentioned about that song was the guitar solo, which is my most well known solo really, and really that interpretation of that melody played legato with all that anguish. 6
To my great surprise, the guitar sounded...different somehow. It wasn’t just the fact that there were twenty or so years between the recordings, either. No, the version I’d heard in that medley was a dazzling technical display, wowing me with a great melody but also the pyrotechnics of the player. This? This wasn’t that.
Steve: I play it at a deathly slow speed. Funereal speed. As a colonial guitarist it's different for Daryl. Seriously, to play someone else's part is almost impossible. I understand his need to play it differently. It is very difficult to play exactly the same notes as someone else... I think these things for musicians are not sacred. Somebody has always to give something of themselves. 7
And yet I wasn’t disappointed either. I may have missed a couple small embellishments, but I still got those same goosebumps. I was still completely enthralled by what I was hearing. A little confused, I suppose, but enthralled nonetheless. I did a bit more digging on it later; ah, this was a fellow named Steve Hackett who used to play with the band but had left. That does explain things a little.
The excitement didn’t abate there though; I still had a whole minute of song left! It’s another verse, eh? That works. Sounds good, sort of repeats that line about gods and men and sheep I liked. “The sands of time were eroded by the river of constant change.” Oh now that is good. Maybe all this meant something more and I just need to listen better, or maybe have the lyrics beside me.
And then a grand piano outro, fading out gently. What a pleasant little bow to put on the package.
Phil: It came to life on the [Trick of the Tail] tour. It really got a great audience reaction whereas before…‘Cause the ending is quiet and people would sit around waiting for somebody else to clap. Maybe it was because everybody knew it by the time of the last tour...And with two drummers it just seemed to happen. 2
Man...that guitar solo though. This song was nice, but that guitar solo.
...I’ma play it again.
Man, still impressed by how intricate this piano work is. OK, do these verses make more sense now? Who is “he” who’s riding majestic? What scene of death are they talking about? Oh they really did say “cancer growth.” Gross.
Tony: Mike and I wrote the lyric together, although it was mainly me - I won't put too much of the blame on Mike. I don't know really. It was just following the idea of a river and then I got a bit caught up in the cosmos and I don't quite know where I ended up, actually. But, it just about stands up, I think, for the song. For me, musically, it's got two or three really strong moments in it and fortunately they really carried us along. It's become one of the Genesis classics and I'm very happy for that. 1
OK, heading into the instrumental middle again...oh! That’s a guitar or something doing an actual siren wail! I didn’t even catch that before, that’s really cool!
Tony: Steve I think was really starting to find his feet a bit more as a player, and live and everything. And also he always contributed…A lot of Genesis music obviously required a sort of guitar, acoustic guitar picking and stuff, but people notice it less, I think. People tend to notice lead playing a little bit more. 5
Steve: With the show I am doing at the moment [my solo band] decided to do a full-length version...of “Firth of Fifth” rather than just the guitar solo. It is arguably Genesis' best-known guitar tune, and it is a damn good song there that isn't heard. I don't think even Genesis do that anymore, and maybe they never will. I do enjoy a lot of these songs in their entirety. The fact that I left the band doesn't mean to say that I am not, in spirit at least, one with many of those tunes. I still love them, for what it’s worth. 7
Hey, wait a second! That flute melody is the same as that guitar solo melody! That’s fantastic! This song is like three distinct sections but they all get done in different ways! What a brilliant approach to the music! How did they even figure out to combine them all like this?
Tony: I had these three bits I’d written, which I originally assumed would go into three different songs. But I think, probably because the others wanted my stuff sort of [shoved into] a kind of Banks ghetto, they all ended up in the same song, which ended up being “Firth of Fifth”. I really just strung the three bits together; well, made sense of them in a way to make them good. 5
Phil: “Firth of Fifth” was one of those things where Tony just sort of, you know...we’d all get together to play each other our bits, of which he had hundreds. Mike had quite a few and Peter had a few. And we’d be steamrollered into playing “Firth of Fifth”. 5
Tony: It was pieced together with the whole group around so it was one of those things where the group arrangement is quite important. There were three separate sections and it was Mike’s idea to put them together. I was thinking of keeping them separate, but they worked very nicely together. I’d offered some of it at the time of Foxtrot and Phil found it very difficult to play on it - this one part of it - so we dropped the idea. I’m glad we did ‘cause I developed it a lot better. I think it was great to be told “no” at that point and produce something a lot better as a result of it. 2
This thing works really, really well as a flute melody too. They must have had this wicked guitar solo and some genius figured out “it could probably work scaled down on flute, too,” and then they actually did that! So cool.
Tony: The way the guitar solo evolved was quite interesting really. Because I’d written the three bits, and the second bit I’d written was just really a flute and piano melody. I’d just seen it as that. We played it a few times and it sounded really nice. And then one time Steve started playing it, you know. Started playing it [big] like this. I thought, “Well, great! Let’s put the Mellotron in, big chords!” It was almost like a joke. We were kinda doing this sort of “a la King Crimson” is how we saw it. Just this overblown thing. And I thought, “That actually sounds really good, this!” So for the reprise of that melody when it came in the second half of the song, we said, “Well, let’s do it this big way. See how it works.” And it worked really well. It gave a chance for Steve to actually do a sort of proper guitar solo. 5
Tony: And so we used that as the sort of peak for the song, and stuck all the other bits in with it. It’s just an example of how...If I’d written the song on my own and it had just been credited to me, it would never have done that probably. It needed the whole band there to do the other thing with it. And that’s the sort of thing you get out of a group. I think it just leads you places you weren’t perhaps otherwise gonna go. 3
Well hello again, guitar solo. You’re looking lovely this evening. You know, it’s OK if you’re not as technical as that live rendition. This is actually way more artistic I think. Sounds a lot more like it’s “supposed” to sound, if that makes sense. And good grief, he’s holding that note out forever!
Steve: I was bending all the notes… I remember one or two people said, “It sounds a little bit Indian, almost like a sitar.” There was a note that I was able to sustain that would work nine times out of ten. At the top I’d do a high F#, and just with proximity to the speaker cabinets, it fed back. So it sounded like I had perfect sustain on every note; I didn’t. But I was able to fade in the notes on the beginning of it and sort of wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. Coast over, sort of atmospheric section. 5
Ooooof those big chords on the guitar’s second run through the main melody. That deep bass. It’s a guitar solo, but the guitar isn’t even what makes it so strong! It’s everything else. That guitar is just riding on top of it. Perfectly.
Steve: So you have that idea of the song, the whole sort of idea of water; the sea and rivers and all of that. Very Genesis kind of tone poem type stuff. And I was trying to create the idea of a bird in flight. So I held it and made it sustain, and I thought, “Well, this could be a little bit like a seagull over a calm sea.” And then it becomes more turbulent... It’s just one of those gorgeous melodies. 4
So daggone good. Did they play it live in full? I bet they played it live. Probably no fade-out ending there either. I’ma find it live. Oh, here it is.
Tony: We’re doing “Firth of Fifth”...and musically it stands up very well... It’s a sort of period piece… We’re not trying to change the old songs. It’s nice in some ways to recreate the era. Because you’re playing in a way you don’t play now but did play then. It also means that the songs stand up for themselves, the old and the new. But we’ve always done that you know. 8
Aww, no piano intro here. No flute either! Phil’s singing too, but that’s fine, I love Phil. But this still sounds really good. That bass comes through really well during the guitar solo. And hey, my embellishments! They’re back, but still done really tastefully! I guess this is actually the best of both worlds! THOSE BIG CHORDS. And man, I didn’t notice before, but this thing just rolls on longer than guitar solos typically ever have a right to, doesn’t it?
Mike: Once again it’s a nice section. You know, it’s about more space. We’re taking the main theme from the song and just letting it run for about four minutes, with a lovely guitar solo playing the melody and some lines in between. So we’re starting to give sections more space, and more time to sit in one mood rather than move on too fast. 5
Steve: It’s kind of become Genesis’ most well-known guitar solo. So yeah, I was allowed to play - forever, it seems - this great long guitar solo in the middle of something written by Tony. 5
Ooh, the outro! Is it gonna fade out? Whoa hey! It didn’t! In fact it ended exquisitely!
...I’ma listen to it again.
Come back to me, oh marvelous solo. I shall earn your company by listening to the rest of this music as well, but then with me you shall stay, forever and ever.
Tony: I suppose on this it was more of a genuine guitar solo. Some of the others were a bit tricksy; he was kind of thinking very hard about every note he played, and so it didn’t sort of soar in quite the way that this does. Where I think he allowed himself to have a bit more freedom with it, particularly before the main melody starts; just some really nice little phrases and stuff. So he sounds more like a real guitarist. 5
Steve: Iconic instrumental stuff... It aspires to symphonic rock at its best. I think without the Mellotron, that wouldn’t have happened. This is three guitar takes all played back together for the last time around that favorite melody. John Burns, who was engineering at the time, said, “Why don’t we just play them all back together?” So I was able to get away with something that’s nearly a three minute guitar solo. Unheard of for Genesis back in those days, but I think the whole song is absolutely beautiful. Of course, it’s also I think memorable for keyboard players as well. But being a guitarist of course, I have favored the famous guitar moment! 9
...Guys, I never did stop hitting that replay button. “Firth of Fifth” is not only my favorite Genesis song, and not only one of my favorite songs period, but it’s the song that broadened my musical horizons. It’s the song that taught me what “progressive” means. It’s the song that sent me spiraling down into what then felt like a dark, bottomless pit of Genesis material to explore. Well, I’ve explored that shadowy pit now. I’ve mustered enough light to identify one hundred ninety-seven individual works of art down here, and I’ve assembled them into a big pile so I can climb back out. And here, at the peak, is the song that got me into this mess in the first place. I always liked Genesis, but “Firth of Fifth” made me a Genesis fan in earnest.
Steve: When I play guitar on "Firth of Fifth" to this day it still feels like flying over a beautiful ocean. 10
I’m soaring right beside you, Steve. Every time.
Let’s hear it from the band!
Steve: The song had an aspect of blues, an aspect of gospel about it. It had something of English church music, but it also had an aspect of something Oriental or Indian, almost. So, it was a fusion of influences. But at the time, we weren’t using the word fusion - and we weren’t using the word progressive. It would eventually be described as progressive, which was a catch-all phase covering an awful lot of bases. I think it can support [its length] because it’s thematic. Basically, it’s the same melody played three times with minimal variation. It’s done like jazz, with the statement of the theme then you go off and improvise, and then return to the theme. On “Firth of Fifth”, when it comes back it’s a larger arrangement. It’s the tune as written, then “let’s take this to the mountains,” to a certain extent. 11
Phil: “Firth of Fifth” was a big tour-de-force. 5
Tony: This album I think we came together much more as players. We sound convincing as players to a greater extent… There’s a bit more technique in there. I always like to think that technique is just another sort of paintbrush, in a way. It’s something you can use, and it can be very effective at times. It should never take over. I think with some groups it takes over; it becomes “the technique’s the thing.” You know, you’ve got a guitarist who can play so fast that he can’t stop doing it. And we’re very happy...I’m very happy to just sort of sit down and hold down chords, which I do a lot of the time. And other times, you’d go mad. The contrast works and you just use it [to] illustrate something you want to try to illustrate with a piece of music you’re writing. That’s the thing. And I think Steve’s playing on this was really good. Obviously the “Firth” solo was a standout moment for his time with us. 5
Peter: Most of our stuff took time, took a few plays to sort of open up to a listener. But if they got it, it would stick around for quite a long time. 5
The sands of time may erode, but “Firth of Fifth” is a constant in my life. Thank you all for taking this journey with me. And thank you Genesis for making it possible.
1. Songfacts, 2018
2. NME, 1977
3. Genesis - The Songbook
4. Steve Hackett, 2020
5. 2008 Box Set
6. The Waiting Room, 1997
7. Genesis-News.com, 2009
8. Sounds, 1981
9. Steve Hackett, 2020
10. HackettSongs, 2018
11. Something Else, 2014
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Kubala, the path to glory of Barcelona's most loved legend: A story of overcoming, adventures, crazy nights, majestic matches and of a good man who made everybody around him happy.

Nothing in Kubala's life was normal. Now that TV series about sportsmen are fashionable, the one that could be made about the adventures of Ladislao Kubala Stecz (Budapest, 1927) would raze through many seasons. In one season we could go deeper into his facet of legendary footballer, capable of changing the way of playing this sport, how he saved his life at the very last moment by not getting on the Torino plane that crashed in Superga, or how he was ten minutes away from signing for Real Madrid or enrolling in the Pirate League of Colombia, all of this in order to end being Barcelona's biggest icon... who ended playing for Espanyol.
We could add a season of adventures due to his incredible escape from communist Hungary. His journey through Italy with a football team, the Hungaria, of stateless people in which in addition to Hungarians also played Croats, Albanians, Romanians and Serbs who were looking for a life as good as they could get. One could also add to this the facet of the social phenomenon that dazzled a country during the dark years of Franco's regime by becoming a pop star, and end up with another season about the legends, real, invented or simply exaggerated, of his adventures in Barcelona's nightclubs.
Everything about Kubala is like a movie.

The legend of the escape.

Born in Budapest to a Hungarian man and a Slovakian woman, he always considered himself as both Hungarian and Slovakian, even when this republic was part of the now extinct Czechoslovakia. By the age of 20, Kubala was a football star known for his performances with Slovan Bratislava and Vasas Budapest. In fact, he had already been capped by Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Later, he would go on to play for Spain, and is still the only player to have been capped by three countries. But fed up with the system that was preventing him from developing his professional football career, he embarked on an escape proper of a movie to the West. He contacted a human trafficking organisation, a mafia that, in exchange for a large amount of money, facilitated a partial escape. As is now the case with criminals who gamble with the lives of people who want to cross the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe or pass to the United States through the southern border, the smugglers did not secure anything. The last part of the journey depended on the luck and expertise of the escapees and often ended tragically.
"I remember that when I escaped from Hungary I was just a kid. The traffickers left us in the middle of a mountain to do the last stretch on foot. We were a large group. The adults gathered the children and gave us palinka. A liquor similar to brandy to get us drunk and fall asleep. A child's cry could alert the border guards patrolling the mountain. And they had orders to shoot to kill. The group split in two. My group was lucky and we were able to win the Austrian border. Once we were safe, we learned that the other group that had travelled with us and took another road was discovered and killed." The chilling story is that of Zoltan Czibor, the son of the former Barça player who tells how he had to flee Hungary with his family to join his father in Italy. The odyssey of Kubala, six years earlier, was mirrored.
The traffickers disguised Kubala as a Russian soldier and put him in a truck that would leave the escapees at an undetermined point in the mountains so that they could cross the border into Austria on their own. Kubala remembered that this journey scared him to death because unlike his comrades, he was a national celebrity and any soldier who checked the military truck would recognize him. He was endangering his life and the lives of those who accompanied him.
When they were left in the mountain on January 27, 1949, Kubala walked, and crossing a river helped by a tire that carried him, managed to reach Innsbuck, Austria, without any documentation. He was a stateless man starting from scratch.
In Austria he managed to sign with Pro Patria, a team from Milan, but he could only play friendly matches. His escape provoked the anger of the Hungarian regime, which denounced him and blocked his registration. Kubala had married Anna Daucik two years earlier, sister of Fernando Daucik, a veteran player of the era who would later become a famous coach. When Kubala fled, he left behind his family, whom he was unable to reunite with until six months later, when Anna was able to cross the border and meet Ladislao in Udine. He arrived with one more member of the family. A baby, her firstborn, whom Kubala did not yet know.
While he is irregularly enrolled in the Pro Patria, he gets the chance to sign with Torino, Italy's dominant team at the time. He is offered a trial match. Nothing better than a friendly match that Il Grande Torino had in Lisbon as a tribute to Xico Ferreira. However, when the Turin team's plane is about to take off, the president of Torino prevents Kubala from boarding because he fears a federal sanction. On the return flight, on 4 May 1949, the Fiat G 212 of Avio Linee Italiana crashed into the retaining wall of the Basilica of Superga due to the wind, poor visibility and an error in the altimeter of the aircraft. At 180 kilometres per hour and with a visibility of 40 metres, the pilot saw the stone wall of the basilica too late when he thought the plane was at 2,000 metres and was actually at 690 metres above sea level. The 31 people who were travelling in that aircraft died. Kubala had saved his life again.

The legend of Hungaria.

With no possibility of playing in Italy because the back then very powerful Italian Communist Party was pressing to prevent people fleeing from countries in the orbit of the USSR from taking refuge in Italy, Kubala had no choice but to form a team of stateless people who hired their services throughout Europe to play friendly matches against whoever hired them.
The team was called Hungaria, was managed by his brother-in-law Fernando Daucik and was mainly made up of Hungarians, although there were also players of other nationalities. It was made up of: Kis, Marik, Torok, Mogoy, Lami, Rákosi, Hrotko, Majteny, Nagy, Kubala, Otto, Licker, Turbeky, Monsider (Croatian), De Lorenzi (Albanian), Szegedi (Romanian) and Arangelovic (Serbian).
They played their first match against Italy's B team, but again pressure from the PCI forced them to play outside Italy. And that is how they arrived in Spain, hired by Santiago Bernabéu. On June 5, 1950, they faced Real Madrid in Chamartin, losing 4-2, but with a stellar performance by Kubala, who scored both of his team's goals. Three days later, they beat the Spanish team that was preparing for the World Cup in Brazil, where they came in fourth, 1-2 again with a great performance by Kubala, who received an offer from Real Madrid to be signed.
Kubala requires that to join the team, Madrid must also hire Daucik as a coach, something that Bernabéu does not agree to. The Madrid coach at that time was the Briton Keeping, a great connoisseur of WM tactics. Daucik is offered to train the Plus Ultra, a Madrid branch that plays in the third division. That negative and the federative problems that drags Kubala cause that Madrid becomes disinterested in his transfer, that was already agreed lacking of some fringes that turned out to be determinant.
The Hungaria moves two days later to Barcelona, where on June 10 plays against Espanyol losing 6-4 in a match with Pepe Samitier, the technical secretary of Barça, in the stands. It is necessary to emphasize that Hungaria had been playing three matches in five days with a very short team and without being able to make substitutions. Even so, Kubala amazes and Samitier does not mess around. Six days after that match, on 16 June 1950, at half past six in the evening, Kubala signed his three-year contract with Barça at the Pasaje Méndez Vigo. Obviously, with Fernando Daucik as coach. President Montal, Sr., signed him as an "amateur player" in order to avoid any trouble for the federation.
Real Madrid rages and is shocked. Pablo Hernández, general secretary of the white entity and Santiago Bernabéu's right hand, assures that Barça had broken a non-aggression pact between both teams and had hired a player with whom they were in talks. Samitier, who was unbeatable in the media, declares that he had been following Kubala for months and that the pact had not been broken because it referred only to players who played in Spanish teams. And Hungaria was not Spanish. In fact, it wasn't from anywhere.
But Kubala's problems didn't end there. He still didn't have a registration card or an international certificate. Vasas in Budapest and the Hungarian Federation had reported him to FIFA. Barça used the weak argument that since professionalism had been abolished in Hungary, any amateur player could choose his destiny. But the fight was not going to be so easy.
Barça, it is fair to say, had the total support of the regime and the Federation to carry out the transfer. At the level of anti-communist propaganda, Kubala was perfect. A young and extraordinary sportsman who fled from the red hell to take refuge in Franco's Spain was a candy too sweet to let go. Muñoz Calero, president of the Federation, rowed in favor of Barça as did Ricardo Cabot, secretary of the organization, who, in addition to his affection for the regime, was a well-known Barcelona supporter.
But the procedures were very slow and Kubala could only play friendly matches. He made his debut against Osasuna on 12 October, scoring two goals on the day the Barça fans knew instantly that they had just signed a star. Then he played against Zaragoza, Frankfurt twice, Girona and the Badalona. In six friendlies he scored 11 goals. The fans and the player himself were eager to meet in an official match. For all this, the Federation to play the role with FIFA fined Barça every time he lined up Kubala with the symbolic figure of 50 pesetas.
It is at this time that Kubala is about to leave everything and go away from Barça. He needed the money and wanted to play at the highest level and in Colombia he was offered the chance to do so. The South American country had organised the so-called Pirate League outside FIFA and many of the world's biggest stars joined, including Alfredo Di Stefano who went to Millonarios in Bogota. Kubala had a tempting offer from Atletico Bucaramanga. With the option of Kubala leaving, events accelerated. To begin with, Barça fixed his financial situation by means of a peculiar amateur contract in which they paid him 1,200 pesetas for "compensation" and 3,800 for "encouragement and overfeeding".
On April 2, 1951, he was granted the status of political refugee as a stateless person, which was a step towards granting him Spanish nationality. But for this step, Kubala first had to be converted to Catholicism through the sacrament of baptism. Every Spaniard had to be a Catholic. Kubala was baptized in Aguilas, Murcia, the birthplace of Muñoz Calero, president of the Federation. It is then when Barça, to avoid problems, settles its differences economically with Vasas, which despite being against capitalism accepts a payment of 300,000 pesetas to provide the transfer, while the Pro Patria, which also complained, is satisfied with 12 million lire.
The Kubala era could now really commence.

The legend on the field.

Kubala made his official debut with Barcelona in Sevilla in a cup match. The Sevillistas at that time were one of the best teams. Sevilla and Barça had developed in that period a great rivalry in the high places of the table. In 1946 Sevilla had stolen the possibility of winning the championship from Barça by drawing in Les Corts on the last day, in 1948 Barça beat the Sevillians in the final of the Eva Perón Cup (which would be the current Supercup) and in that campaign a Barça without Kubala had lost all its options to win La Liga after losing 4-0 in Nervión three days before the end of the season.
The Cup, by that time was played once the regular season was over and in those circumstances the official debut of Kubala took place. On April 29th in Nervion, Barça arrived to play against Sevilla in the middle of a difficult atmosphere. The Andalusians had lost the league in a dramatic outcome when they drew at home in the last match against Atletico Madrid with a refereeing performance that the locals judged scandalous. For further concern, the Federation allowed Kubala to line up with Barça in the first round of the Cup, which in Sevilla was taken as a surprise.
With the stadium full to the flag, Barcelona defeated Sevilla in an exhibition of Kubala. He wasn't just the best of the match but he showed Spain a way of playing football unthinkable until that time: chest controls, shots with curve, millimetric changes of play of 40 meters, protection of the ball with his back, use of the body in the shot and touches with the heel.
Domenech, Sevilla's attacker who was the direct protagonist of that match, explained years later how he remembered that day.
"It was something never seen before. Ramallets kicked it and he would receive her with his chest, or with either of his legs. If you tackled him he would dribble you in a brick. He'd put the ball where he wanted her. Besides, from time to time he changed with César, he'd be a center forward and César would be a midfielder. They drove us crazy. The anger of the people became clamours. We were witnessing something extraordinary. It was like going from black and white cinema to colour," explained the former Sevilla player. The Sevilla crowd, who had welcomed Barça and its new superstar with anger, ended up giving Kubala a standing ovation for every action as if they were watching a glorious bullfighting performance.
Kubala's actions on the field change football forever. Since there was no television, his exploits are reported orally. There is no other way to see it than to go to the field of Les Corts, which is packed for every game Barça plays as a local. It is a very common argument to say that Kubala forced Barça to build the Camp Nou because the old Les Corts was not enough to accommodate all the people who wanted to admire him. Maybe he had an influence, but as the journalist Frederic Porta, author of an interesting biography of Kubala (Kubala, l'heroi que va canviar la història del Barça. Ed. Saldonar) explains, "the truth is that Barça had already bought the land to build the Camp Nou two years before and the idea of making a bigger field already existed, but Kubala advanced everything and justified the change".
Blessed with brutal technique, a sensational strike of the ball and an unusual physical strength, Kubala changed football. He would throw free-kicks over the wall with curve or by making the ball bounce in front of the goalkeeper, he would take penalties (he was practically infallible) with what was later called paradinha and was credited with the Brazilians although he was the first in Europe to do so. Physically he was a bull. In his youth he had practiced boxing and if he didn't become a recognized fighter with a great career it was because he had short arms. His lower body was sensational. He had a butt and legs that allowed him to protect the ball like no one else. Frederic Porta says that "in his time of splendour they measured his thighs and each one had a circumference of 69 centimetres, which would be the waist of one of his companions". He was also capable of running the 100 metres in less than 11 seconds. A total athlete with a very refined technique.
However, that physical strength and the confidence he had in her, for he never avoided a collision, were his downfall. Kubala became the target of a hunt by rival defenders. He never went into hiding and that's why in eleven years at Barcelona he suffered up to eleven injuries of some seriousness. With matches without television, the harshness that bordered on violence was the order of the day. He was being kicked to death.
But Barça was living its most golden period to date. Moreover, the club revolved around Kubala. Frederic Porta compares it with the present time: "Now they say that Messi commands the club and surely he commands, but nothing to do with the influence that Kubala had. Kubala was the boss and even the one who decided the transfers. And no one was surprised. That Barça adopted the socks with the horizontal stripes blaugrana is his imposition. He saw them on the rugby team, liked them and incorporated them into the football team by decree. In fact, it is he who insists on signing Luis Suarez when he impresses him in a match against Deportivo. Kubala was Suarez's first fan, but what happened in the stands, which was divided between Suaristas and Kubalistas, is another matter.
Suarez was eight years younger than Kubala. He arrived at Barcelona at the age of 19, Kubala was 27 and his physique was very punished by his injuries and the life he was living, as he did not deprive himself of anything. If he held out, it was because of privileged genetics.
Therefore, there never was a real competition between them, but there was a lot of influence here from the figure of Helenio Herrera, the Barça manager, who saw Kubala as older and slower and was looking forward to a quick change by the young Galician as the leader of the team. The debate reached the stands and the media. It was an absurd debate, because they didn't play in the same position, with whom Kubala really had a certain rivalry with Eulogio Martínez, who was the one with whom he alternated the position.
Kubala's physical problems were not only due to injuries. He had the whole of Spain in suspense when he suffered a tuberculosis that could have cost him his life. There are apocryphal versions that explain that this tuberculosis was actually a stab wound he suffered in a fight in a cheap pub in the fifth district (Barcelona's Chinatown) and he has to retire to Montseny to recover. Nobody is betting on his return to the pitch if he survives a "hole in the lung the size of a silver bullet" according to the chronicles of the time. But once again, Kubala's ability to survive prevails. He returns to the pitches, but already heavily punished and slowed down.
It is against this backdrop that the 1961 European Cup final arrives, with Kubala arriving at the age of 34 with a herniated disc that barely allows him to walk, but he wants to play. He knows that the club is going through a critical situation despite having reached the final of the maximum trophy for the first time: the club is bankrupt because of the construction of the Camp Nou, the fights in the board of directors are chaotic, Luis Suarez has signed for Inter (the one in Bern will be his last game with Barça), which was where Helenio Herrera had left the team in the hands of Enrique Orizaola.
Kubala tells Orizaola to line him up, that like all the Portuguese will go for him and he can barely move because of the back pain and will play with painkillers, it will give more opportunities to his teammates. But the match is a pile of misfortunes for Barcelona. Ramallets scores an own goal, Barça shoots three times to the damn square posts of the goals (from then on they would change their shape) even Kubala kicked a ball that hit a post, went through the goal line until it hit the other post and came out repelled. Barça lost and Kubala's time at Barcelona came to an end.

The man of the year.

Kubala's significance goes beyond the playing field. According to a vote made for Radio Barcelona by journalist Joaquín Soler Serrano in the mid-50s, the Catalans most loved by their fellow citizens were Doctor Barraquer and Ladislao Kubala.
"He was literally the most famous person in the city, people really venerated him, and even Messi's influence cannot be compared to that of Kubala in those years," explains Porta.
His life off the field was notorious. An unrepentant night owl, it was common to see him in Barcelona's fashionable coffee shops and nightclubs. He was a man who stood out. Alfredo Relaño defines him in some of his articles as "a demigod. Tall, strong, blond with blue eyes and an overflowing personality. He aroused the admiration of men and women alike. An idol". Frederic Porta sums it up with the argument that "he would be the sum of Messi and Beckham and on top of that, he would go out every night".
Faced with Kubala's disorganised life, the Barcelona management decided to set up a private detective agency to follow him at night. The reports of the detectives are still in the Centre de Documentació del FC Barcelona and Frederic Porta published them in the history magazine 'Sàpiens'. In them, he gives a detailed account of the nocturnal wanderings of "Mr. K.", the code name of the Blaugrana star in an exercise in absurd discretion. There is also a letter from a Sabadell businessman in the club's archives, expressing concern that Kubala and Czibor had been "found in a Sabadell establishment after 2.30 in the morning accompanied by some of those ladies who were once gentlemen, I don't know if you understand". What the businessman doesn't explain in the letter is what he was doing in the same place.
Kubala's fondness for drinking was no secret. Helenio Herrera explains in a television interview that "one day at an airport in customs they asked Kubala if he had anything to declare and he said two bottles of whisky. The official asked him to show them to him and he, laughing, touched his belly and said: 'X-ray, I have them inside'. On another occasion, in the same situation, but carrying the bottle in the bag, he was told to leave it at the airport because no alcoholic drinks were allowed to be taken on board. Neither shy nor lazy, he drank it in front of the astonished official.
The legends about the occasions when the night was made longer and he did not arrive at training sessions or matches were recurrent. In that case, he called on the services of Angel Mur Sr., the team masseur who knew where to find him. He would start a pilgrimage through the usual places or floors until he found him, took him to the changing room, gave him a cold shower, a coffee with salt, a massage and played. The fans forgave him everything and were aware that their star was a man of joyful life. But he never failed on the field. Among the crowd at the time there were comments about the Kubala ritual in those games that followed a busy night. "He started off badly, and vaguely, but the signal was when, ten minutes into the game, he rolled up his sleeves as if to say 'I'm here, let's start, I've already cleared off', and the machine started to work.
You can't find anyone in the world who speaks ill of Kubala. Absolutely no one. Everyone highlights his huge heart and that despite being by far the highest paid player of the time (he earned six times more than his teammates) he didn't have a no for anyone. His detachment from money was legendary.
As proof, the anecdote explained by his biographer Porta: "one day he arrived at the dressing room and commented that his car had been stolen and that in the glove compartment he was carrying an envelope with 200,000 pesetas, which was a fortune for the time (a good apartment could cost 130,000 pesetas). When his colleagues tried to encourage him, he simply said: someone who needs it more than I do must have taken it".
It was also usual for him to take off his coat and give it to a poor man who begged in Barcelona's winter, or to take in any Hungarian who came to Barcelona asking for help in his house in Carrer Duquesa d'Orleans. Kubala, remembering his times as a stateless refugee without papers, asked nothing. He would take them home and pay them a boat ticket to America. The motto among the refugees fleeing the Iron Curtain was that "if you get to Barcelona, look for Kubala, he will help you". He never failed.
Later, now retired, he set up a bar next to Czibor in Capitan Arenas Street, the mythical Kep Duna (blue Danube in Hungarian) that became an unofficial refugee reception centre that was monitored by the secret services of the United States, the USSR and the Spanish police. Something like the Rick's Café in the film Casablanca, but in the upper area of Barcelona.
He was the great character of Barcelona loved by all, but there was a moment when this was almost broken, strange as it may seem. It coincided with the defeat in Bern, when a part of the press came to write that "Barça must be de-Kubalized as the Soviet Union must be de-Stalinized" and, especially, when he signed for Espanyol. The earthquake was a huge one.

From the bench to Sarrià.

After the defeat in Bern's final, Kubala announced his retirement from the fields. He had taken the coaching course and was ranked number one in his class. He made a pact with the president Llaudet, who was also an interesting character as we will see, that in principle he would take charge of the footballers' school of the club and that in a couple of years he would be in charge of the first team.
Meanwhile, Barcelona is directed by Lluís Miró who faces a team in disarray. Suarez has been transferred to Inter in the worst decision in the club's history and myths such as Ramallets, Tejada and Czibor were in the decline of their careers. The season starts badly and after losing at Mestalla to Valencia by a humiliating 6-2 that forces the resignation of Miro. It was time for Kubala, who was promoted to the first team in front of the joy of the fans. And the project results from the beginning. The Barça of the second part of season 61-62 recovers in La Liga and finishes second (the distance with the white ones when Kubala arrived was almost insurmountable) and avenges the 6-2 of Mestalla beating Valencia in the Camp Nou 4-0.
Facing the next season, the 62-63, Kubala can make his team by giving painful drops of some of his former teammates as it is the case of Eulogio Martinez or Evaristo. One of Llaudet's reluctances to give Kubala the job of coach was that he would have to manage some of his former teammates.
The positive expectations about Kubala's first full project were frustrated at first when the Blaugrana team had to play the final of the Copa de Ferias against Valencia, the team that caused the fall of Miró and the promotion of Kubala. And the history, by rare that it seems, repeats: Valencia returns to him to put 6-2 to the Barça. The fans explode against the team. In the return match, obviously, there is nothing to do, but Llaudet's ability to self-flagellation has no limits. As Alfredo Relaño writes, the Blaugrana president calls a dinner with the press the day before the game and makes this statement that if it happened today would open all the news.
Llaudet, in front of the press and accompanied by the coach Kubala and Gràcia as captain, asks the fans to forgive him and announces changes in the protocol of the start of the second leg. "Valencia will go out first to receive the applause, then Barcelona, to receive the whistles. Then Kubala will come out, so he can get the thunders. And finally me, so that all the whistles fall on my person, because I am the barcelonist who loves the club the most and who is destined to die on the pitch, if necessary...". He ends his speech crying. As we can see, Gaspart didn't invent anything.
The match ended in a draw and Kubala's project as Barça's coach was doomed. The manager is fired in the middle of the season and then a bomb explodes in Barcelona. Kubala accepts the offer to return to the pitch, but not as a coach, will be as a player and nothing more and nothing less than in Espanyol, Barça's eternal rival.
On 3 September 1963 Espanyol, then Español, announced that Kubala would be hired as a player. At 36 years of age, he was capable of being competitive.
His decision divides the public opinion. On the one hand, Federico Gallo and Juan José Castillo support his decision, on the other hand, Carlos Pardo or Ibáñez Escofet shoot at him. They call him a "Jew who sells himself for a plate of beans", a "traitor" and they see political interests in his decision.
Kubala explains that he wanted to continue playing and that he saw himself capable of doing so, although he accepted that he was not at Barcelona's level. He had received offers from important clubs, including River Plate and Juventus, but he doesn't want to leave Barcelona, where he feels like another Barcelonian. The Espanyol meets his expectations.
His start of the season is not bad, on the contrary, he scores in his first two games, but the team doesn't work out. The coexistence between the veteran newcomer Kubala and the team's symbol, Argilés, is not easy. Scopelli is dismissed as coach and de facto command of the team is given to the two team leaders despite their differences. The crisis erupts when the Spaniard visits the Camp Nou. The periquitos lose by 5-0 in a match in which the Barcelona crowd booed Kubala who they are eager to humiliate with his new team. Even so, at the end of the match, Kubala has a gesture to his former team that shows that he does not hold any grudge against what he has heard from the stands. At the end of the match, he organizes his teammates to make the corridor to Barça applauding the rival in recognition of the exhibition made. That gesture feels bad among the Espanyol fans and among some of his teammates. Argilés does not make the corridor and goes straight to the changing rooms.
The following year, Kubala becomes a manager-player and among the departures that he causes, there is the one of Argilés, but by contrast, Di Stéfano arrives, also hurt by his bad exit from Madrid fighting against Bernabéu.
Di Stefano and Kubala are like brothers. Even though they haven't officially played together, they have a special chemistry. A friendship that is forged when the Argentinian is about to sign for Barcelona.
When Di Stéfano arrives in Barcelona to sign for Español, he stays first at the Avenida Palace Hotel, but after a month he is living in Kubala's house as one of the family. The children of both always maintained a relationship as if they were brothers.
One of the players under Kubala's command was Jose Maria Rodilla, one of the players who would soon form the famous 'Dolphins' forward line. At 80 years of age, Rodilla remembers Kubala.
"I have a wonderful memory of Kubala, I always had a special affection for him. Not in vain, he was the one who signed me for Espanyol", he remembers when answering the call of this newspaper to which he confesses that* "normally I do not make declarations, but to speak about Kubala I do whatever is needed"*.
Rodilla, former teammate at Espanyol, has clear that "he was the best player in the world in terms of technique. Di Stéfano was the best footballer, but he didn't have his technique. Alfredo was more intense and more player of the whole field, but he could not do things that Kubala did"
Those who had the privilege of playing with both of them remember that "for example, Di Stefano wouldn't leave you alone for a minute, he was all over you and the fights were intense, but he always set an example, he never asked you for anything that he didn't do. Kubala was more paternalistic and tolerant. For example, he would ask us to do as he did in training, and while sitting down he would be able to make 3,000 touches on the ball without dropping it. Only he could do that."
Rodilla adds a story that explains Kubala's quality as a player-coach at the age of 38: "We went to play a friendly at Amposta and they called a foul on the edge of the box. Kubala takes the ball and whacks it into the corner. The referee made him repeat it because someone had moved or I don't know what. Kubala takes the ball and wham, back to the square. And the referee tells him that he has to repeat. That day Kubala got angry and left the field."
Rodilla recalls that Kubala's move from Barça to Espanyol created controversy in the city, but that he was oblivious to it. "He was still a magnificent person, I never heard him say a bad word against anyone. He never got into an argument, he was goodness personified, he was unlucky in his time as a coach, but as a coach he is one of the best I've ever had, with a great love for young players and always trying to help you improve."

Boys well, optimal morale.

He extended his playing career for a couple more years by playing for Zurich and even trying out the American adventure at the Toronto Falcons, where he coincides with Branko and Daucik's son. At the age of 40 he played 19 games and scored 5 goals.
In 1968 he returned to Spain and trained the Córdoba team for a short period of time until he was called up to the national team. Kubala will manage the Spanish team until 1980, when he signs for Barcelona again as a coach.
Kubala's debut with Spain was, once again, a propaganda match for the regime. It was played in the Estadio de la Línea de la Concepción against Finland and Spain beat their rivals 6-0 in a match that was no longer useful. Spain had missed out on qualifying for the Mexico '70 World Cup, but the idea of that game was to showcase a great field that could be seen from Gibraltar as if to give jealousy to those in the Rock for the sports culture of Spain. Dictatorship things.
It's true that at that time Spain was struggling more than anything else on the international scene. It did not qualify for the 1974 World Cup because of Katalinski's goal in the play-off match in Frankfurt, and in both the 1978 World Cup and the 1980 European Championship the team fell in the first round, but there is still no one from that era who will make a judgement against Kubala.
"Kubala, one ahead of his time. No doubt he had a lot to do with his past as a footballer. And not just like any other player, like the best! I remember him always saying to me: 'Ruben, you have to get out of the way on the other side of the ball. Look for the space, not the ball. The goal I scored in Yugoslavia has to do with everything he taught me," he told Fermin de la Calle in an interview with AS Ruben Cano, the hero of the famous 'Battle of Belgrade' in the match that took Spain to the World Cup in Argentina. Yes, the one with the goal by Cardeñosa that could have changed Kubala's record with the national team.
He did a lot to improve Spanish football and his idea regarding the incorporation of foreigners to improve the level of Spanish football was key in the future development of the Spanish competitive level.
His players remember him as a didactic person, tactically bold and very close. At a time when fury was the hallmark of the game, Kubala never forgot that he was the heir to the Magyar tradition of the Honved and the Hungary who, by moving the ball, shocked the world the day they destroyed England at Wembley 3-6.
For the average football fan, Kubala may have been a half-hearted coach who embodied an era of the national team in which nothing was won, as has been the case most of the time, and he became popular for his expressions that would now be meme material on social networks. The national team was known as the 'Kubala boys' and the coach's catchphrase before the matches saying "boys well, optimal morale" was the fashionable phrase in the coffee shops of the 70s in Spain.
But among his colleagues, Kubala still deserved reverential respect. "The first goal was authentically Latin, cunningly scored and perfectly studied. I can only congratulate Kubala on his previous tactical work," said German boss Helmut Schön after facing and losing to Spain in a friendly in which the recent world semi-finalist and next world champion fell to the Kubala boys at the Sanchez Pizjuan with two strategic goals from Arieta. Yes, Arieta against Müller. Seeler, Beckembauer, Maier, Netzer and company.
He left the national team in 1980 to join Barça as the coach of Núñez's second project in an operation that was the prelude to what would happen in the World Cup in Russia with Lopetegui. Kubala committed to Barça while he was coach and tried to alternate functions, but Porta refused. Finally, on 8 June 1980, four days before the start of the European Championship, Kubala signed for the Blaugrana team, which he would join after the European Championship.
His second spell at the head of Barça did not go well either and he was dismissed mid-season. He continued his adventure on the bench as coach of Saudi Arabia (in that he was also a pioneer), training Malaga and the Paraguayan national team before retiring from football on the bench of Elche.
He spent his final years in Barcelona as active as ever. Playing with Barça veterans, helping his teammates, not having a no for anyone and playing tennis every day or going for a run or cycling routes exhibiting an enviable physical condition.
Until the light of genius and the glory faded away 18 years ago. A degenerative brain disease put an end to the adventure, but not to the legend of a world football myth. An icon that changed the lives of so many people that they wouldn't fit even in a stadium.
The coffin with the mortal remains of Kubala was carried on shoulders, amidst the applause of the fans who gathered at the doors of the church of Santa Tecla, by Alfredo Di Stéfano, Gustau Biosca, Eduardo Manchón, Estanislao Basora, Joan Segarra, Josep Bartomeu, Luis Suárez, Antoni Ramallets and Gonzalvo III.
He rests in the cemetery of Les Corts, next to the Camp Nou because that is what he left written in his will, while Serrat sang to him about how...
...Pelé was Pelé and Maradona was the one and that's it. Di Stéfano was a pit of mischief. Honour and glory to those who made the sun shine on our football. Everyone has his merits; to each his own, but for me none is like Kubala. Respectable silence is requested, for those who haven't enjoyed him, I'll say four things: he stops it with his head, he drops it on with his chest, he sleeps it off with his left, crosses the pitch with the ball attached to the boot, leaves the midfield and enters the box showing the ball, hides it with his body, pushes with his ass and gets in with his heels. He pisses on the centerback with a dedicated piece. and touches her gently to put her on the path to glory.

by Santi Gimenez for AS.com (2020)

submitted by HippoBigga to Barca [link] [comments]

Wizard Tournament: Chapter 9

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      “The number next to your name is the odds,” Sylnya told Peter. “and I think that might be some kind of record.”
      “Record?” Peter asked. “Is that a good thing?”
      “It just means everyone thinks you’re going to lose,” Sylnya told him. “The longer the odds the bigger the number.” Draevin caught a glimpse of a smirk from Peter at this news for some reason.
      “Wait a second,” Peter said. “You mean people bet on the matches. Like in horse racing?”
      Sylnya’s face went blank. She looked to Draevin but he wasn’t sure what had her stumped. “Sure,” she finally said, “it’s probably a lot like whores racing.”
      Peter’s eyes went wide and he choked out a snort of laughter. “What?” Sylnya asked. “What’s so funny?”
      Draevin got his own laughter under control first and told her, “Nothing. Just something funny that happened at the last whore race. You’d have to have been there.”
      “I don’t understand you meat-creatures sometimes,” Sylnya complained. She went back to studying the day’s schedule. She had a twinkle in her eye that Draevin was uncomfortable with given her past history of gambling. “Matching up three non-wizards in a row can’t be a coincidence. They must be trying to get them out of the way.”
      “I thought you said nobody knew which of those two orcs was casting spells,” Draevin pointed out. “Drant’ro, that’s an orc name right?”
      Sylnya waved a dismissive hand in Draevin’s direction without looking up. “Yesterday’s news. Everyone was talking about it last night after they registered. It turns out Drant’ro was just a bodyguard for the other guy.”
      “And why would you know that Sylnya?” Draevin asked seriously. “You said you weren’t going to be gambling this year. Remember how much you lost last year? You still owe me a hundred gold.”
      Sylnya gave Draevin a guilty smile. “Well that was before a certain human entrepreneur bought up all my debt!”
      “Is that what all this has been about?” Draevin asked. It all made sense. “Alex is holding your gambling debt until you finish helping Peter?”
      Sylnya snaked an arm around Peter’s shoulder and gave him a rather uncooperative squeeze. “You make it sound like a bad thing, Drae. What’s wrong with helping someone in need? Are you really going to tell me he’s not growing on you?”
      “Yes,” Draevin said firmly. As the group approached the ticket booth Draevin paused. “Please tell me you remembered your promise to buy my tickets this year.”
      Sylnya’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh yeah. I forgot!”
      “Syl…”
      Sylnya pulled some stubs of paper from her belt pouch. “I forgot I upgraded us to a viewing booth last night.”
      “Those are… expensive.” Draevin gave Sylnya a flat look. “Did Alex pay for those?”
      “Not at all,” Sylnya said. They reached the ticket counter and Sylnya handed over her stubs. The little gnome behind the counter took them and handed the group over to a female dwarf in a purple button-down Guild uniform who promised to take them to their seats.
      “Well I know you didn’t pay for them,” Draevin told his friend while they entered the main access tunnel for the arena, which was now bustling with people.
      Sylnya gave a huff of annoyance. “Fine. I didn’t. It was actually Caelnaste that paid.”
      “Didn’t she steal his room last night?” Peter asked.
      “Exactly!” Sylnya agreed. “I went and talked to her last night. She just wanted to offer her apology for that whole thing so there’s no hard feelings. She said booting you was the Queen’s idea and she had no say in it.”
      Draevin remembered the two eldrin mocking him last night. “I’m not so sure I believe that, but it is a nice gesture.” He supposed most well-to-do eldrin must just have more money than they know what to do with.
      “Here you are,” their guide announced. They’d arrived at their booth. It was just three walls to help block some of the noise from the crowd and softer seats, but it beat the hell out of sharing a wooden bench with a hundred other fans like they normally did. And the booth was as close to the field as it was possible to get; the open front dropped right onto the field. “Be sure to talk to any Guild acolyte you see walking around if you have any trouble with your reservation.”
      With that they were left alone to settle in. Sylnya sat in the middle and made Draevin scoot over to make room for Peter, but even with the three of them Draevin had more room than usual so he couldn’t complain.
      “I have a quick question before the matches start,” Peter spoke up. A few Guild engineers were still on the field making last minute checks of the battleground so it looked like they still had some time to chat.
      “Go ahead,” Sylnya said.
      “I get that there are a lot of wizards specializing in physical magics, but what about the less physical ones like lithomancy, sensomancy or cerebromancy?”
      “Those are a lot less common,” Sylnya explained. “Lithomancy’s a bit too finicky for combat, but we get a few. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an illusionist though.”
      “How would they even fight?” Draevin couldn’t help but chime in. “What is even the point of magic that can’t hurt anyone?”
      “As for cerebromancy,” Sylnya continued. “There’s only one I know of this year but he’s the best in the world.”
      “Is that Tomrha?” Peter asked. “I thought you said he wasn’t a master.”
      “He might as well be,” Sylnya answered. “Cerebromancy’s notoriously difficult to master.”
      Draevin had to agree. “I’m just glad he’s on the other side of the brackets from me this year. My cryomancy is useless against mental magic.”
      Peter furrowed his brow, then readjusted his glasses before writing down some more notes in his pad.
      The engineers started clearing out and Sylnya pointed down toward the field for Peter’s benefit. “Those white squares on the ground at each end of the field are called the fighter’s boxes.”
      Peter nodded and wrote that down. “Is that what we stood in when we registered?”
      “Correct,” Sylnya answered. “Contestants have to stand inside until the bell rings. The enchantments prevent spell casting and unravel any active spells.”
      “Unless you’re really good,” Draevin added.
      “He’s just saying that because he always wears Frost Armor robes when he goes into his matches. Don’t listen to him. It’s normally a huge waste of mana to try to bring active enchantments into your match. They’ll usually be worn away by the time the match actually starts.”
      Draevin stuck his tongue at her. “You’re just jealous.”
      “Hardly, I don’t…” Sylnya trailed off when she noticed the crowd around them suddenly starting to quiet. Draevin looked out at the field and saw the announcer was walking into the center of the arena. She was a master sonamancer from Eldesia named Maeve who wasted her talents acting as an announcer in exchange for fame and a steady paycheck. As an eldrin, she complimented her natural white skin and glowing white eyes with a bright shimmering dress of the same color designed to catch the light.
      “The first match of this year’s Wizard Tournament,” Maeve announced in the same soft voice that had made the previous announcement, “is between Shea and Joseph.” She gestured towards Shea on one side of the arena. The blue-skinned sea nymph waved both finned hands for the crowd. “Shea is a sea nymph hydromancer representing the Underwater Municipality of Shashena. She is carrying The Conch of Endless Tides.” At the mention of her item Shea held it up for the crowd to see, as was tradition. “Shea wants everyone to know that if they want their next vacation to be magical they should plan a vacation under the sea that they’ll never forget.”
      There was a smattering of applause. Sylnya commented to Peter, “The conch gives her access to a source of infinite water.” Peter nodded, scribbling in his little notepad.
      “Shea’s wish is for immortality,” Maeve finished. She then gestured towards Shea’s opponent. He held up a scrap of burnt cloth. “Her opponent today is Joseph, a half-elf from Caldenia.” There was an immediate booing from the audience in response to this announcement. “Joseph carries a scorched swaddling blanket from the Draenlin Orphan Fire earlier this year.” The crowd laughed at this.
      Draevin felt the need to comment. “Another one of Korack’s. I don’t know how he convinced the poor sap anyone would just let him win. You might not want to watch this next part.”
      “No,” Peter said firmly. His jaw was clenched tight. “I’ll watch.”
      “Joseph wants everyone to know that The Draenlin Orphan Fire was a tragedy the likes of which has never…” The crowd started making too much noise to hear the announcer’s words after a short time. People were screaming, booing, laughing and even just whistling. Maeve waited patiently for everyone to calm down before she finished. “Joseph’s wish is to bring back all the children who died…” The crowd drowned her out once again. Maeve just shook her head and departed the field gracefully. Normally she sat with the judges in the upper stands and when she returned to her seat the crowd finally went silent.
      The contestants were in position. Maeve raised her hand to signal the judges and the piercing chime of a bell rang through the air. The first match began.
      Joseph gestured ineffectively with his scorched blanket. Shea giggled at him and pulled a stream of water from her conch with a flowing gesture. Joseph was on his knees preaching, Draevin even caught the word “children” in his speech.
      Shea hit him with a torrent of water that blasted him backwards. He slid back until it looked like she was just going to push him out of the arena and take her free win, but then at the last second she twisted her fingers and the water wrapped around Joseph in a globe that suspended him in the air. She dangled him upside down, flinging him this way and that to the crowd’s amusement while he drowned. When she was done toying with him she dropped him on the ground.
      She let him cough for a moment and catch his breath, then as soon as he opened his mouth to speak she shot the stream of water down his throat. He struggled for just a moment, before exploding into a shower of wet gore.
      The crowd erupted in cheers and high in the stands above the bell chimed a second time. Maeve announced, “Joseph is dead. Shea wins.”
      The announcement let loose a roar from the crowd. Draevin was disappointed in how few of the fans were booing Shea’s pointlessly violent display, but he added his voice to theirs. “Booo!”
      “She just killed him?” Peter asked incredulously.
      Sylnya just shrugged. “There’s no consequence for killing someone who isn’t registered with the Guild.”
      “And what’s the consequence for killing someone who is registered?”
      “Only a fine if you didn’t register a Mutual Assurance pact with them.” Peter looked disgusted.
      “You’re going to need thicker skin, human,” Draevin advised. “It gets a lot worse than this.” Peter gritted his face but didn’t respond.
      A pair of medical wizards, marked by their white robes, marched into the arena. They quickly used some spells to clean up Joseph’s “mess” while other apprentices in purple removed the water.
      “They have to reset everything after each match,” Sylnya explained, “so it’s fair to all the contestants.” She took the time to point out the four large boulders scattered symmetrically across the field. “Usually they repair those rocks when they’re used for cover, but even cleaning up water is important.” Peter nodded.
      “The next match is against Drant’ro and Faernyl,” Maeve announced from her more permanent position above the stands on a raised dais next to the judges.
      Faernyl, the red-headed elf they’d run into on their way to the arena grounds, was already waiting in his fighter’s box. The other box remained empty.
      There was a commotion over in the contestant seating area. Draevin peered over and saw some Guild acolytes in purple arguing with a pair of orcs. One was a tough warrior type with a large sword on his back while the other had a grey beard and a long walking stick. The acolytes were trying to get the warrior to move and he wasn’t having any of it. He finally pulled out his sword and they were forced to leave him be.
      After a few moments a messenger ran up to Maeve. “I’m afraid Drant’ro has refused to fight. He has been disqualified from the tournament,” she announced to a chorus of boos. “Faernyl’s match will be postponed until an alternate can be located. We will move on to our third match early. Will Korack and Peter please make their way to their fighter boxes?”
      “That’s you!” Sylnya barked at Peter. “You better hurry!”
      Peter jumped out of his seat. “Already? Where do I go?”
      Sylnya pointed back towards the way they had come. “Back that way, same as when we registered yesterday. The stairs on the left.” Peter nodded. “And good luck!”
      As soon as Peter was gone Draevin let out a big sigh of relief. “It’s about time,” he said. “All his questions were starting to get on my nerves. I hope you still get paid after Korack kills him.”
      Sylnya glared at him. “You can be really insensitive sometimes you know. But yes. I will.”
      When Draevin stretched his legs into the extra space his foot bumped against something. He looked down to see what it was and spotted Peter’s leather satchel. By all accounts the bag was going to be Sylnya’s responsibility after this. He scooped it up to give to her and it made a loud jangling sound. He shared a curious look with Sylnya. “Sounds like it’s full of glass bottles,” he commented.
      She snatched it from him and took a cautious peek inside. It was indeed filled with bottles. Dozens of empty glass bottles. There was also a roll of parchment. “Is that his Fireball scroll?” Sylnya asked.
      Draevin picked it out and carefully unrolled it until he could make out the raised, glowing runes. “Unless he has two of these things.”
      Her mouth opened in shock. “Give it here, There’s still time before his match starts!” She didn’t give Draevin a chance to hand it to her though, she just yanked it out of his grip and shoved the satchel into his arms. “Kot. Ride!” She commanded her shadow. Her shadow stalker, Kot, emerged and she jumped on its back. The pair bounded away down the stairs in the direction Peter had gone.
      Left alone with Peter’s bag Draevin decided to satisfy his curiosity regarding the glass bottles. He held one up for inspection. There was just the slightest hint of white light glowing on the rim. Were these mana potions? Was he recycling the bottles?
      He spotted Korack stepping into his fighter’s box down on the field. A few seconds later Peter jogged up to his own box a little red-faced from his run. Almost immediately a familiar green-skinned creature rode up on the back of a shifting black cat. Sylnya tried to hand Peter the scroll but he shook his head. They argued for a bit, then she left with the scroll still in hand.
      “Sorry for the delay. We’re ready to begin the second match,” Maeve announced from her raised dais. The crowd’s individual conversations broke off and a short cheer erupted.
      After the noise quieted Maeve gestured in Korack’s direction. “In this round we have last year’s tournament champion, Korack!” The crowd cheered appreciably. Korack held up a rod of unknown material covered in intricate carvings. “This year Korack has brought as his item a custom magical focus. Korack’s sponsor this year is Trunstown. Korack is wishing for immortality if he wins this year’s tournament and he wants everyone to know his wish last year has nothing to do with the famine that his home nation of Kreet is currently experiencing.”
      The crowd continued cheering for another minute. While this was going on, Sylnya returned to the booth with the Fireball scroll. “Apparently,” she said as she dropped into her seat, “he didn’t want it. He said it would be useless against a pyromancer and he didn’t want to risk it getting burned.”
      Draevin shook his head. “He’s probably right, but there goes whatever slim chance of winning he had.”
      Sylnya just sighed and stuck the scroll back in Peter’s bag.
      Maeve was gesturing to the other side of the stage. “Korack’s opponent this year is a human named Peter.” The response from the crowd was mixed. Sylnya hollered her support, but most of the rest of the crowd was booing. There was a pocket of humans, way in the back of the cheap seats on the second level, that was making a bit of a racket.
      “There seems to have been some kind of confusion with our human contestant,” Maeve continued, “and he’s entered his box without an item—” It was impossible for Maeve to continue talking as the crowd erupted in a cacophony of laughter. Showing up without an item simply never happened. Maeve had to wave her arms for a while to quiet down the crowd. “Peter chose not to disclose his specialization.”
      In the short gap of silence that followed, a large orc bellowed out, “Human’s don’t ‘ave any magic!” He was rewarded with a shower of laughter and a small boo from the human section.
      Once again Maeve had to wait for silence. “Peter’s sponsor is Haevish Family Mercantile. Visit Haevish today while they’re selling ‘a copper a cup.’ That’s right, this is truly the cheapest wine available.” Maeve did the ad-read for Peter’s sponsor with an unenthusiastic deadpan. “Peter’s wish is to improve the lives of humans everywhere.” As soon as the crowd heard Peter’s sappy wish they started making a ruckus. It was impossible to separate the laughter from the insults. Draevin clapped politely for Sylnya’s sake.
      This time when the crowd quieted Maeve dropped her arm in the signal to the judges and the bell chimed to announce the start of the match.
      Almost faster than the eye could follow, Korack shot out a lance of flame compressed down into a beam that blasted straight towards Peter and pierced a fist-sized hole in his chest.
      He fell to the ground. He was dead instantly.
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