War Syndicate (WS) was a Wynncraft war bloc of the second half of 2017 and the principal opponent of the Coalition in the war that ended the early guild era. It never posted on the forums under its own name. Its roster and its leader are known from a retrospective account by Drew1011, the founder of the alliance that destroyed it.

Classification and the state of the record

War Syndicate left no forum record under its own name: no recruitment thread, no roster, no alliance announcement, and no post identifying its leader^[1][2][3][4], and no [WS] tag in the recruiting megalist^[5]. One written source classifies it, the Aesir Pact thread of 2018, whose origin story recalls "the peak of the War Syndicate alliance"; it is treated as an alliance rather than a guild on that strength^[6]. Its membership, leadership and the course of its war all come from a single retrospective account by Drew1011, composed between March and August 2018 from the winning side and corroborated by no contemporaneous source.

History

War Syndicate was created on 17 July 2017, three months before the Coalition formed^[7]. The Aesir Pact's origin story, written by simplyinfinity_ of Sins of Seedia, recalls Fantasy and Sins of Seedia becoming friends at the peak of the War Syndicate alliance, both settled in the canyon and fighting invaders, until the Coalition split them — Fantasy joining it, Sins of Seedia warring against it as a rebel guild.^[6] That places WS's peak before the Coalition's rise and describes a landscape of canyon-holding guilds resisting invasion, but names no WS member.

Membership

At the declaration of war on 21 December 2017 the roster was eight guilds:^[8]

A ninth guild had left earlier in 2017: KingdomPhoenixes [Phx], which departed after a dispute over its own leader's brief move to Kingdom Foxes and went on to co-found the Coalition.^[9] At least nine guilds therefore passed through the bloc. TheOldKeepers is otherwise unrecorded.

The bloc is otherwise connected by name to only one guild: Illustratus, which the community timeline says was "created from the remains of WS"^[7]. Illustratus was created on 19 February 2018, three days after the Federation's founding^[10], and its own 2019 revival thread makes no mention of War Syndicate^[11]. Illustratus [lus] does appear on the Federation's own member roster^[12].

Leadership

Drew1011's account names a leader: "Tnt, the unofficial leader of War Syndicate", whom it places at the head of the member guild BuildCraftia.^[9] That person was probably, though not certainly, Tntdestroyd. Tntdestroyd posted in March 2017 arguing that HackForums "should be limited on territory influence", the politics of a rising war-guild leader in the Hax era^[13]; he was the Emperium of Wynn's War Leader in mid-2017 and its member of the month for his warring^[14]; Drew1011's own public tribute of November 2018 thanks "@Tntdestroyd, for fighting hard to reclaim the map back in March. As much as we've been at odds, I'll always be thankful for your contributions in the time you were with us"^[12]; and in April 2018 Tntdestroyd wrote on another alliance's thread that "We have already begun forming what it is your looking to do now, join us if you like"^[15]. Whether Tntdestroyd owned BuildCraftia is not established: the guild's recorded owners are ItsAZZA in 2017^[16] and Liliya/Topper29 in 2019.

A possible continuity with the Emperium

Four of the War Syndicate guilds were Emperium of Wynn member guilds during 2017 — BuildCraftia (owner ItsAZZA), Sins of Seedia (simplyinfinity_), Titans Valor (IceResistance) and Beasts (Beastovrlrd)^[16] — Tranquility applied to the Emperium on 12 September 2017^[17], and the Emperium's War Leader in mid-2017 was TnTdestroyd^[18]. War Syndicate was created on 17 July 2017 and the Emperium fell on 17 October 2017^[7].

That overlap suggests that War Syndicate was substantially the Emperium's warring core reconstituted off the forums, which would also explain its absence from them — its members already had a forum presence under a different name. No connection between the two blocs was ever recorded, and War Syndicate's founding was never described.

Doctrine

Drew1011 describes a standing rule that War Syndicate did not attack the province of Wynn: "They had a rule where they would not attack the province of Wynn at all, aside from a few free-for-all territories. Thus, they divided Gavel amongst themselves, and we divided Wynn amongst ourselves." He characterises this as "one of, if not the main factor of their downfall", on the grounds that it left the Coalition over a hundred territories to grow on — his judgement.^[19] The same account records a pact with Paladins United, "a guild who had made a pact with War Syndicate in order to keep their beloved island" of Corkus.^[19]

He also claims a long-running informant inside the bloc, known to the Coalition as "Mr. White", whom he identifies as the leader of the War Syndicate guild "DsO".^[19] That tag does not match his own roster, which lists The Divine Swords [DsQ], while the Emperium's roster has a separate guild, The Divine Souls [DsO]^[16] — two different guilds. Which he meant, and who the informant was, was never established.

The Gavel Invasion, 21-25 December 2017

The community timeline gives two dates for the war at once — "War is declared on December 21 2017" and "Coa vs WS 12/17/2017" — without saying which is the declaration^[7]. Drew1011's account settles on the 21st, and offers a reason the date was memorable: it was the third anniversary of Wynncraft's guild release.^[19] His account reproduces the Discord exchange that the Coalition treated as the declaration itself.

The end of a Discord exchange of 21 December 2017 between Drew1011 and the War Syndicate leader, closing with the line "here we come" that the Coalition read as a declaration of war. From Drew1011's storytime account; the screenshot contains one profanity.^[20] Gavel at the start of the invasion, labelled by holding guild: BuildCraftia, The Divine Swords, TheOldKeepers, Tranquility, Beasts, DogsAmongUs, Sins of Seedia and Titans Valor across the province, with a HackForums foothold in the north-east. From Drew1011's storytime account, the first of his numbered war-progress screenshots.^[21]

The war ran five days:^[22]

• 21 December — the invasion opened. About three hours in, with roughly ten territories taken and wars failing repeatedly, the Coalition voted to offer a ceasefire "until wars became less glitched"; no reply came. By the end of the day 44 Gavel territories had changed hands.
• 22-23 December — BuildCraftia and Sins of Seedia were the only two guilds that consistently fought back, "with roughly half their guilds barely even attacking back". Sins of Seedia was targeted by as many Coalition guilds as possible until it asked to withdraw to the jungle, which was granted unopposed.
• 23 December — three guilds left War Syndicate. Drew1011 calls this "the final blow to the alliance".
• 24 December — the remaining members abandoned Gavel entirely and moved to Wynn, taking territories the Coalition had left behind.
• 25 December — "By the end of the day, all 349 territories on the map were owned by Coalition guilds or those we had truced with" — "67 days after the planning had begun".

He credits the guild leader Thundderr with "probably somewhere between 100-150 territories" across several guilds — his own estimate, offered before the rule against warring with multiple accounts existed.^[23]

Gavel after the province was taken, 24-25 December 2017, labelled by holding guild: Paladins United across the Light Realm, Kingdom Foxes through the centre and west, KingdomPhoenixes, HackForums, Hall of Fame, Kasai Shinrai, Imperial and others, with residual BuildCraftia and Titans Valor territories still shown. From Drew1011's storytime account, the twenty-seventh of his war-progress screenshots.^[24]

The end: wipe, merger, or both

The sources have long disagreed on how War Syndicate ended.

The wipe reading comes from IceResistance, founder of Titans Valor — a War Syndicate guild, so a witness from the losing side — writing on 14 April 2020: "wdym Coa never technically 'beat' ws — yes they did. They wiped ws off the map on Christmas day."^[25]

The merger reading comes from Lego_DW, ten days earlier in the same thread: "Coa never technically 'beat' WS rather when AA split from coa, Coa and WS merged to wipe a common enemy, this was a creation of fed."^[26]

Drew1011's day-by-day account supports IceResistance on the December question and describes the merger as a separate event two months later. He states that after the Coalition split on 16 February 2018 he proposed merging with the War Syndicate remnant himself, messaged BuildCraftia's co-leader without response, and that "Simplyinfinity, the SDU Leader, messaged me and said they would agree to a merger" — the arrangement out of which the Federation was formed.^[27] His own contemporaneous tribute credits simplyinfinity_ in the same terms^[12]. The two readings therefore describe two events two months apart: a December wipe and a February merger. Lego_DW's conclusion — that the Federation was a Coalition–War Syndicate merger — stands; his premise that no wipe occurred does not. The community timeline's own version, "December 24, 2017 — WS merges with Coa to defeat AA", is internally inconsistent, since the same image dates Alliance Alliance's creation to February 2018^[7].

Legacy

On either reading, the Federation of 2018 — the alliance that went on to hold the entire map for most of a year^[12] — was built partly out of War Syndicate, so the largest power of the Federation era descends in part from a bloc that never posted a single thread. The bloc's leader remained inside that alliance until March 2018, when a vote was opened to expel his guild.^[28]