Isle of Conquest...

Yes, those pesky followers sent me out to do PvP again!

Another trip to the battlegrounds!

I zoned into Isle of Conquest and immediately started changing my talents to the ones I like for PvP, namely Icefury.  Unfortunately, this didn't work as there was a Tauren Paladin pounding me in the face!

What's going on?
Oh sh*t, we're already going!
Battleground mode activated.
RUN AWAY!

Luckily, Paladins are relatively easy to run away from so I survived and did enough to deter him from continuing his chase... or he just got bored and went for someone else.

This bought me enough time to survey the battlefield and work out what the hell was going on.

It didn't take long, we were losing.

My first clue should have been zoning into a part-done battle.  Nobody leaves when they are winning, do they?

My second clue was the giant coo-beastie hitting me in the face, there were enemies in our base.

My third clue was that I deduced, from a quick look at the map, that we weren't in their base.

At this point, I just assumed we had lost. 
All other visits to Isle of Conquest have followed a very simple pattern...
Horde and Alliance charge past each other to the opposite base, lay siege and throw people over the walls, open the doors, flood in and kill the boss.

My kind of PvP... one that doesn't involve the opposite faction!  It's just a PvE race.

So I thought we had already lost, decided to have fun killing some Hordies and went looking for the Paladin.

Two very strange things happened...
1. Someone cut through the moaning in chat and came up with a plan.
2. People listened!

It was a simple plan.
Clear them out of our boss room before they all arrived.
Defend at the gates.
Attack the horde base and we have lost because they are already so far ahead.

And that's what we did!
Any horde that came up to our gates died under the full force of Alliance might (well, 30 of us) as we repelled attack after attack, each time retreating to the safety of the keep.

It took a little while but the horde realised our strategy and decided to group up and attack en masse.
They suffered heavily under the cannon fire on the approach but forced their way to our gates time and time again.
Each time we pushed them back and held within our keep.

I was having fun, killing the horde from the back, and I could see the strategy working but I did begin to wonder how we were actually going to win the battle if we never left our keep.
I had no idea about 'reinforcements'!
It was just a number at the top of the screen.  Obviously, I assumed it had some impact on the battle but had no idea what that was.

I know all (both) of you reading this will think I'm an idiot but I told you, I've never done PvP.  I had no idea.
It turns out that when the reinforcements drop to zero, you lose!

I didn't know.  I'm guessing the horde didn't know either!
They just kept coming! And dying!
Until there were none left...