I remember in some of the earlier days there was a lot of talk about forming alliance against TLI/MAC, but it seemed like it didn't get traction.
Also, our alliance with JCR always seemed strained. Celeste-Sky seemed capable, but wanted an awful lot of control, and did a lot of criticizing. I think something that forced our hand was Atrox was just nobling a barb in 1 of our provinces every few days, and had to be dealt with. Celeste wanted to noble barbs next to him and was having us do a bunch of spy work on the barbs, but we weren't seeing any action, so we at BAT were like, forget it, let's just attack. And that was the beginning. And then Celeste-Sky went mia for awhile, and JCR went their separate ways. When a few of them joined TLI/MAC, that was a big problem.
However, I'm thrilled with it all overall. I didn't start playing this game at all until December, when I joined UPC in Castel, and then started BAT in Drachenfels in February. I intended us to be a teaching/learning tribe, but it grew way beyond that. I got blessed with some pretty good, and dedicated players at the beginning. Sparty. Valdas. General PK. Schoske. Sir Robert XX. DrDeath777. Suicidalwants. Keitaro. Chrisny. Baeby. and some others. But some of those guys really made it happen in the early days.
And that other alliance MTW got that we wiped out quick was Team Captar. They were kind of divided on their vote for who to join. We were both lobbying them at the same time. After they went y'alls way, some of them went inactive.
At least it made it somewhat interesting.