Filicraft
Troopships sail to Columbia during the Battle of Columbus

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Launch date	15 June 2019
Historical era	1870
Map	Onions Americas
Host	uhFiliate
Length	13 days
Peak playercount	~150
Plugin	Towny
Map download

Iteration chronology
27.0	28.0	29.0

Filicraft, also known as i28 and officially “Manifest Destiny” was a server hosted by uhFiliate in June 2019. It was a much-hyped and well-remembered server, as well as being Fili's first hosting effort. The server was set on a map of the Americas (North and South) and had a canonical launch date of 1870. This unique theme allowed players to larp as Wild West cowboys, European colonizers, the newly independent nations of Latin America, and much more. Despite its size and initial success, the server was cut short after just one war weekend.

After Nurse_Reno's 2030 server, there followed an unprecedented 8-month gap without talk of a new server. During this time, Reno even deleted the long-running /int/craft Discord held under his adminship, due to his belief that /int/craft was stale and deserved to die. In this time of doubt, there emerged a hero, a new champion ready to take on the burden of /int/craft hosting, to create a new server to revive the community: his name was uhFiliate, also known as Filiboga or just Fili.

Little is known as to what motivated Fili to step up to the hosting plate, except for the extenuating circumstances facing the community around this time. Perhaps it was just simply the desire to play a server, and with none around, it was what he felt he had to do. UhFiliate was an oldfag, associated with the Norse group, having joined the server in 1.0 and making enough of an impact on the early iterations to earn his own wiki page. However, he had been relatively inactive for some years prior to the announcement of his server in May of 2019, and he had no prior experience in running a server.

Due to his lack of expertise, tasks were largely delegated to members of a development team, recruited among personal connections and interested Discord members, with Fili himself acting as a sort of project manager or hype man. The actual Minecraft server (and test server, launched mid-May) was configured by Lemon and Luna. Gun models were made by Stongduke. The official modpack was assembled by chippledipple. The server map was custom-made by a strange newfag calling himself Onions. Discord announcements and moderation increasingly fell to the purview of another (actual) newfag, Jonathan. Blog posts were made by PandaTanner and Jonathan. All development was discussed in a publically-viewable Discord channel called #the-committee.

The server was noted for its hugely successful mass-advertising campaign. Word of the server was spread far, from posts on tangentially-related Discord groups to multiple threads per day on 4chan. This brought a wave of newfags on a scale not seen since /int/craft's 1.0 genesis. The presence of oldfag uhFiliate at the helm may have also helped to reawaken some dormant players of past years. This was all in addition to the relatively consistent existing playerbase from iterations 24.0-27.0, setting up Filicraft for huge activity.

Final map of pre-server claims, made by Jonathan.

Filicraft had an unusually-long development cycle, with the public Discord for the iteration created more than a month and a half prior to the server launch, a period that would end up being over 4 times longer than the actual length of the server. During this time, Discord members, through the use of a role-react bot, were encouraged to pre-select their nation pick for the upcoming server, an /int/craft first. This pre-claim system kept prospective players involved with the server during the wait for launch, and helped with planning, but, with some players already declared as nation leaders, also led to some inevitable pre-server political maneuvering.

The largest nation emerging during the pre-launch period was, naturally, the United States. This group was decentralized, consisting of many subgroups within it looking to build various towns. The largest of these was a group led by Onions looking to settle in Wyoming. Originally desiring to establish a “Great Plains Free State”, this group was ordered subsumed into the U.S. by decision of the admin (for historical accuracy) and Onions subsequently became de facto U.S. leader. One subgroup was intending to settle in Hawaii. A group in Texas, though nominally allegiant to the U.S., organized themselves separately. They were a brony group led by oldfag floods_monitor.

Other major nations in North America were Deseret, led by stryker from his established group, and the British Empire, newfags organized by Jonathan. Each of these countries grew to more than 50 declared members. Another group with a large Discord presence was Chile, who previously played Novorossiya in 2030, led by CuliusJaesar. Mexico was led by admin Fili himself. Smaller nations, such as Alaska, Cuba, Uruguay, and the Dutch, rounded out the roster.¹⁾

Two opposing power blocs were formed. The first, headed by the British, united European colonial powers and Hispanics against the perceived American-Mormon threat, and also included Cuba, Mexico, Chile, and the Dutch, but was informal. In response, Mormon diplomats publicly announced the signing of the "Salt Lake City Accords"²⁾, which bounded Deseret, the U.S., Alaska, and the Kingdom of Cascadia (an American splinter group) in a defensive pact. The British-led alliance was undermined by the representative of Cuba, sprinkledinkle, who was secretly an ally to Deseret, and fed them information on private diplomatic discussions. These developments ultimately mattered little on the live server, as the actual political situation was quickly realized to differ from the impressions presented by Discord. Nonetheless, they engaged the attention of many in the pre-launch period.

Springfield, USA, during the early server.

Filicraft launched on Saturday, June 15th, a day delayed from the original scheduled Friday launch date of June 14th (as Fili was busy IRL and couldn't have everything ready by the original date). Launch went about as expected. PvP grace was lifted after a day.

The first four days mostly consisted of basic town building and development, the story of which will be roughly the same for every nation. A nation-by-nation report was written for the blog by PandaTanner and Jonathan³⁾. Of particular note to wider server history, sprinkledinkle, Discord-designated leader of Cuba, saw his power on the island supplanted by manslay3r and players loyal to him, who founded the “Spanish Empire” from their eastern Cuban city of Manzanillo, which became one of the nicest-looking towns on the server. Sprinkle was first relegated to a small settlement in western Cuba (population: 1) and then left the island completely to join the Mormons.

Another surprise (not pre-claimed) nation founded was “Mesa Verde”, later renamed to “New Columbia”; their town, Columbus, was approximately located in western Iowa. Columbus was centered on a medieval-style castle, and they seemed to larp as some kind of religious order, pasting banners with the Knights Templar cross all around their land. According to the blogpost, they counted 26 members, making them the fourth largest nation on the server in its initial days, and they “made themselves known, travelling far and wide across the continent to stage numerous memeraids against unprepared towns”. Their presence would soon be influential on server events.

Main article: Battle of Columbus

On Wednesday morning, accusations were made on Discord that the Columbians used illegal hacks during a raid. In defending himself, a Columbian player would refer to his group as “our clan”, prompting further accusations that they were normie cringelords or even Redditors, and a crusade was called against them by a wide coalition of nations. Succumbing to popular pressure, Fili declared a cruel and unusual punishment against the Columbians: a surprise mid-week war period.

The invasion of Columbia ensued with members of at least six nations sailing boats from the server spawn (in the Bahamas) and up the Mississippi river to the Columbus castle. The fighting lasted three hours, and despite being pressured on two fronts, the Columbians held out quite well. Coalition members made slow progress claiming the open ground outside the castle, and then became stuck by its walls. However, more accusations of combat hacks against the Columbians were made, and Fili again intervened by banning several members believed to be using killaura. With their strength depleted, the Columbians soon gave up, destroyed their supplies, and the castle was claimed and looted by the coalition. Some time later, the accused Columbians were unbanned and the town of Columbus was restored, to surprisingly little objection. However, they would not play in force again.

The two days following the punitive expedition against Columbia were typically uneventful. Server-wide tensions would finally come to head during the first scheduled war period on Saturday, during which there would be several conflicts of note.

Main article: Battle of Cuba

The storming of the Dominican spawn chunk.

The Cubans, under manslay3r, and the Dominican Republic, led by The Big Kaz M, engaged in PvP during the week. The Cubans poised to use the first war window to conquer the Dominicanos, and in preparation, built warships with guns aimed over the harbor of western Hispaniola. The Mormons, for their part, joined the fight to protect the sovereignty of the Dominicans as well as press the claim of their pretender, sprinkledinkle, for governorship of Cuba. Both sides would recruit other nations to assist them in their efforts, and so the war sucked in various foreign volunteers from across the map. Mexico, Texas, and Brazil would send troops for the Mormon-Dominican cause, and Britain and Columbia would help the Cubans.

The war took place with Cuba on the defensive, fighting on two fronts: east, against the Dominicans, and west, against the Mormons and Texans. The Cubans fought well, and were able to stave off the invasion of their home territory despite being outnumbered, likely helped by the long resupply line for their western enemy (the server spawn warp in the Bahamas now being disabled for this war period). However, a British-led attempt to covertly claim the Dominicans' home chunk was repulsed just minutes away from success, putting an end to hopes of a decisive Cuban victory in the war. It was discovered during the Cuban war that dynamite was an extremely effective weapon, being used to deadly effect by both sides.

The war window closed with the Dominican Republic in full control of their island, and with Cuba conceding some territorial losses, both in the eastern and western fringes of Manzanillo. However, post-war, Fili would controversially intervene to encourage some sort of peace deal. When manslay3r rejected the notion of this and threatened to simply not log in again if an unjust settlement was enforced, he was banned and Manzanillo was deleted by the admin, wiping Cuban claims off the map. The Mormons would contend this as a victory, and sprinkledinkle was (re)instated as Kang of Kuba.

British and Cascadian troops pose in conquered Anchorage.

The casus belli for the war between Alaska and Cascadia was the founding of an Alaskan settlement called Victoria, in British Columbia. Cascadian leader Benvb7 cited the settlement as illegal, as he had been granted the rights to settle in this region of land by its historical owners, the British. Negotiations were attempted, but Alaskans were slow to reply, perhaps desiring to delay the issue until they could secure backing by some ally, such as the Mormons. With the war window approaching, however, the Cascadians declared war in the morning, and Britain declared their intention to assist on the Cascadian side. The Alaskan leadership, for their part, blamed the war on Cascadian bellicosity and refused to log in.

Victoria was conquered by Cascadia with no resistance, and the capital Anchorage was captured by the British after a short fight against a spirited but outnumbered Alaskan defense. Alaska fell after about an hour of fighting.

Brazilian soldiers harassed a Chilean farmer in Patagonia, causing a diplomatic row. The farmer salted his fields and fled to the Falkland islands, establishing the town of Stanley under British protection.

Some time later, in a brief skirmish near the end of the war period, a force of Brazilian cavalry led by LeiteArts10 launched an attack against Chile over the Andes mountains, with the goal to contain the ambitions of their regional rival. The small Chilean defense force was hopelessly outgunned, and so a British expeditionary relief force was dispatched to Santiago under the leadership of Itsame12. The Brazilians gained the upper hand in the ensuing battle, but no territory was traded.

Following the Saturday war's events, the number of online players declined, which no doubt contributed to Fili's decision to pull the plug, unwilling to pay for another month of server hosting time, as the lease on the box was set to expire that Thursday. As such, the server would not live into its second war weekend, coming to a premature end and leaving many to speculate as to the potential conflicts that were to remain unfought.

Fili's tenure as admin was criticized by many at the time, such as Cuban player Onion Wizard, who produced a video titled “Is Fili a Bad Admin?”⁴⁾, highlighting his poor handling of the Cuban and Alaskan wars, among other complaints. Many players would be unhappy at the short length of the iteration.

However, Fili must be praised for putting together a competent team that created a technically-sound server. The advertising efforts and the resulting newfag boom also changed /int/craft forever, resulting in the formation of several new metagroups and creating a momentum that carried the server on for at least the next 2 years. Many noteworthy players of the modern era cite Filicraft as their first iteration, and almost all who played it remember it well. Filicraft's reliance on Discord for organization and nation pre-selection was also imitated by subsequent servers, particularly by the Onions administration, for better or worse (probably worse). For these reasons, Filicraft can be considered one of the most influential iterations in /int/craft history.

Fili would go on to produce “Filicraft 2” just one month later, but it failed to emulate the best parts of the first server, and ended in disgrace for the host. He would later redeem himself with the Epochcraft series.

• Alaska
  • ★ Anchorage
  • Victoria
  • Pavlovskaya
  • Ivanovich
  • TNT's Cabin
• British Empire
  • ★ St. John's
  • Halifax
  • Montreal
  • Churchill
• Cascadia (Washington territory)
  • ★ Spokane
• Cuban Kangdom
  • ★ Havana
• Danish Empire
  • ★ Kingston
• Deseret (Utah territory)
  • ★ Salt Lake City
  • Cheyenne
  • Newburgh
• Dominican Republic
  • ★ Santo Domingo
• Mexico
  • ★ Mexico City
• New California Republic
  • ★ San Francisco
• New Columbia
  • ★ Columbus
• Spanish Empire
  • ★ Manzanillo
• United States
  • ★ San Antonio
  • Boston
  • Philadelphia
  • St. Louis
  • Springfield
  • Cincinnati
  • Portland
  • Detroit
  • Houston

• Brazil
  • ★São Paulo
  • Porto Alegre
  • Salvador
• British Empire
  • Georgetown
  • Stanley
• Chile
  • ★ Santiago
  • Punta Sur (Patagonia plantation)
• Dutch Empire
  • ★ Paramaribo
• Paraguay
  • ★ Asunción

• Battle of Cuba
• Alaskans