In the spirit of celebrating successes and failures, am posting that my LB win streak has finally come to an end at 24. I only got a silver this time around, and was pipped by a mere 600 points. I gotta admit for a milestone finale, I made a ton of mistakes and didn't show the normal paranoia that had guaranteed myself a win 26 times earlier.
I started much to early in the leaderboard and found myself in a group with a fellow neighbour of mine who I recall I befriended on the second or third leaderboard ever. I'm normally paranoid of tied finishes, but being in the same group felt like things were coming full circle. Maybe too much. I accepted an offer to make a tied win, but warned them that if a challenger gave chase it would be every player for themselves. I wasn't going to take second sitting down while I had this streak going. It was still a large compromise, since you've given up the element of surprise and are highly visible sitting ducks. I know since I've exploited this situation several times before in the past for the win.
We both seemed to have multiple advantages throughout the leaderboard and led by a large margin for the entire period, trading first back and forth. At the end a few gave chase, and my neighbour put 14,000 points between us. In a bad judgement, I wasted some 3.5 million apples but soon we were tied for the finish. With more than half an hour to go, I went to the mines to **** time. I made the mistake of not monitoring the finish like a hawk and only noticed one challenger moving in the last 30 seconds. I gave chase but it was too late. In a case of cosmic karma, my very same strategy had been used against me.
Am kinda disappointed in myself that I made so many mistakes for a seasoned player, but in a way am also relieved that I don't have to worry about keeping this streak. 10 was a milestone finale, and when that passed then 20 was it, and now I felt like 25 would have been the true finale given work and partner pressures. This way it sort of is a nice and tidy way to finish off my love affair with DS leaderboards. I probably won't take them too seriously from now on (i hope). A 24 win streak ain't bad for a free-to-play-er.