This is 3rd season of MB and the roster has changed up but it's primarily an MVP team, a group of the best & most active CW players across a number of clans - taking players from Masters, Python (maybe mostly these two?) and then the best from Excel and others. Some moved their primary accounts over, others with alts who still consider another clan their 'home' clan. So not surprising they do well. Essentially this is Yolo v2 but done better and with the key difference that Masters is no longer active in CW, so they're able to get those top players (instead of playing against them like Yolo had to). So breathes life back into CW for those in the top clans who are interested in CW but are in clans that aren't. This is a good thing.
As for poaching from Excel - while it sucks to be on the poached end of this, poaching from other clans happens all the time, so it's really nothing new (which doesn't necessarily make it okay, but I'll leave that discussion for others). Just maybe it's usually for CL instead of CW? Not sure. But in the end, MB offered them something Excel (or whatever other clans they came from) didn't, which is a chance at CW glory (some will consider this an oxymoron, lol), and those players left of their own volition. Just unfortunately en masse, leaving Excel in bad-ish shape to the extend where even NEETs overtook it for 3rd place. BUT ... maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel - a lot of folks in MB are only passing by, only there for a season or two, so maybe it's time to return home? Nothing stopping from poaching them back, lol.
Their clan page reads: "Some said it would be near impossible to just start up like that and win." --> well it's certainly not impossible, even Yolo managed to get 3rd place "easily" (defining "easy" such that the next clan in 4th place was a number of territories off and after giving up vying for 2nd or higher, many players took the rest of the season off and remained @ #3) but couldn't get 2nd or higher, at least partly due to lack of interest and ability to get the right # of active players (this is where MB succeeds).
But as Doctor K has pointed out, their clan page also claims it to be "easy": "Well we don't believe in impossible. As a matter of fact we thought it would be easy - and it was (S14)." Would have to define what "easy" means to comment on this. From what I see, MB has organized participation that requires consistent effort across the entire season to keep turning out and playing (eg: 1st day of this season had a single slot, and 22 of them showed up to play - that takes coordinated effort). And then recruiting across numerous clans, looking for folks who will join the cause for a season or two (or more). I wouldn't consider this "easy" myself but who knows, maybe they're not playing at full capacity b/c they don't have to, and have some additional power they can flex if it comes down to it, thereby making it "easy". It's really just semantics anyhow, and in the end it doesn't really matter. Easy or not, they've won 2 seasons and remaining competitive for the current one, so congrats to them for that.
Definitely comes at a price.
For sure, a price that Masters decided they didn't want to pay anymore and dropped out of CW after showing they could own it for several seasons. Top few spots in CW takes coordinated, consistent effort across as many players as is necessary to beat the next contender - could be 20 players, could be 30, and however serious the next contender is is the level you have to compete against, and it's certainly not for everyone, trying to find a slot/template that you like/are good at every day. It's real effort and can be inconvenient as hell. But to some, it's fun, so we play. Especially now that the coin rewards are a bit better, there's a bit more of a draw as well.
Edited 6/19/2022 04:15:19
