After a day of interviews with Ubisoft and a win streak I had no business being on, March of Giants still had one game left in it. The team that built it — Siege veterans Xavier Marquis brought out of Amazon and back to Ubisoft Montreal — had already sold me on soldiers you can command, Battleworks you can drop on the map, and 4v4 matches that end when two Bastions fall. None of that prepared me for pickup against a stranger the other writers would not shut up about.
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After wrapping the interviews, we had about an hour left, so I walked back to my station for another game. Most of the players and developers were off doing their own interviews. I got relegated to bots.
A few minutes in, a dev pointed at me. “Want another game?”
“Of course, dude.”
In a few minutes we had slapped together whoever was left. Another writer and two developers on my side. The same setup across the table. Sitting across from me was one of the other writers. Her name escapes me, so for the sake of a name, Brit.
Brit could not stop mentioning how excited she was to play with Aaron. “Is this Aaron guy pretty good?” I asked. At this point, we were all buddy-buddy. “Oh, he’s some really good League of Legends pro,” she replied. “Like a Diamond?”
“I think he said Master?”
Master is the third-highest rank in League, the top 1 percent of the player base. I never confirmed it. By the end of the match, I needed less proof.
I picked my current favorite giant, Ossuary, whose ultimate raises an army of the dead. Basically, The Return of the King scene with way fewer steps. Everything else felt normal. I fell into the old MOBA trance: baiting people into reach abilities, ticking health until they had to back, even catching myself trying to drop a ward.
I got a kill, died once, picked up a few assists, and was already pacing behind my team. Then I ran into who I can only assume was Aaron and ate an ultimate.
Better decision, don’t go for the revive, don’t walk into that. Being the lowest level on the team doubles it. I needed to change something.
Down, and my teammates were losing mid. I started blaming myself. That old sinking feeling crept in. I hadn’t lost all day. We were on a stupid win streak, and I had been having it. Facing a real challenge, I was getting dominated in-game and in my own head. It wasn’t that I stopped having fun. In competitive games, I always feel like the loss is on me.
Better decision, don’t go for the revive, don’t walk into that. Being the lowest level on the team doubles it. I needed to change something. It got worse first. While I pushed mid, top got blasted. I rotated as fast as I could. They took our Bastion anyway. We were squared up around 14k. Aaron was sitting on a comfortable 20k.
That’s when “Welcome to the Jungle” started playing in my head.
Jungle for the win
You see, MoG has its own mixture of jungling. You can take out enemy shops to earn Acolades that let players supercharge their abilities with more range, projectiles, damage, etc.
These are permanent buffs, so getting them when you can is pretty crucial. However, until then, we hadn’t been high enough level to take them out, let alone stay alive against this guy.
Jungle crawling around, I managed to grab an Acolade alongside some much-needed extra gold. I mean, at this point in the game, I might as well have been Smaug from The Hobbit (Alright, two Lord of the Rings references) with how much gold I was sitting on.
March of Giants has its own mixture of jungling. You can take out enemy shops to earn Acolades that let players supercharge their abilities.
Still, I wasn’t quite near Aaron; I was still a decent amount behind him. That’s when the 26-minute mark hit, and we took our first Bastion, the bottom lane! Yes, this game was so back and forth that it doubled the length of any of my previous sessions.
Not only did we take the Bastion, but we also dropped two of their players, including A-A-Ron. We were back in it, and things were heating up. Now, I kept pace with the enemy, only a few thousand behind the other team; I was well over 4k above my next teammate as I ganked their low-level player for some easy experience.
However, only minutes later, we were battling for our very lives in mid lane. The entire enemy team brought down the hammer and managed to wipe two of us off the map. The two who went down? The writers.
The developers, backed against the digital wall, pulled off a miracle by fending off all four foes like heroes in a last stand. Dropping two with the added aura farming.
Barely two minutes later, the enemy surged down our bottom lane, but the devs dug in, defenders to the core, while my teammate and I slipped around the flank, pouncing. Three fell at our feet, including their Master Aaron!
The room erupted, a chorus of cheers from journalists and developers alike.
Knowing this was our chance, with enemies stuck behind the ever-haunting respawn timer screen, we pushed toward the middle. Victory, seconds away. I didn’t just cheer. I exploded out of my seat like a firework, as if the Vikings had finally clinched the Super Bowl, shouting “YES!” like it was the final thing I’d ever say. Super embarrassing to think about now.
The room erupted, a chorus of cheers from journalists and developers alike. Still riding the adrenaline wave, I walked to the other side of the room, searching for the legend I’d just managed to best, and asked:
“Who the hell is Aaron?”
March of Giants Pioneer playtest launches on October 7, 2026, and runs until October 18. The game will be available exclusively on Steam.
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