WoTG "endgame" - Campaign Ops & Stronghold NMs?

So, one thing I've said about WoTG was that I would go about organizing whatever "endgame" event came out in the expansion. It seems that two events managed to sneak into the last patch without me noticing!

1. Stronghold Notorious Monsters (SNMs)
This seems to be a system similar to the ZNM system. In each [S] stronghold, there are 8 NMs that need to be killed for drops that are turned into key items once they are traded to a NPC. Once all 8 NMs have been killed, this unlocks an alliance Sealed Container NM (SCNM) battle in the stronghold.

It's similar to ZNMs as in you need to kill a bunch of mobs in order to go for the final battle. The good news is that there is no "zeni farming" that needs to be done. Besides dropping the key items, each NM also has their own two drops, and of course the alliance SCNM has some interesting drops as well. More info on the mobs & drops is available at http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Category:Stronghold_Notorious_Monsters

I'm thinking of gathering some people and going to play over in the past! I don't think we spend enough time in the WoTG areas... the beastmen stronghold are virtually deserted, and it should be easy to find these NMs, get some exp while playing around in the past! Given people's really filled up schedule, I'm thinking... Friday evenings, 7pm PST start time... any interest? Leave a comment or send me a /tell!


2. Campaign Ops
Apparantly when a nation has control over a beastman stronghold, there are offensive campaign ops that are opened up with rewards. There are two rewards that caught my eye:

From the Windy Op "Plucking Wings": Roundel Earring - Waltz Potency +5%
From the Sandy Op "Splitting Heirs": Cuchulain's Mantle - Str+4, Dex+4, Accuracy +5

Both of these items are really good for Dancer. Waltz Potency is something that only the AF body has right now, and that's the highest accuracy I've seen on a Dancer-usable back piece. The Str & Dex are also really good for Blue Mage.

Two small issues with doing these ops...
1. We need to own the beastman stronghold... given how slacks Hades is, it might be a while before this happens :) However, doing the Stronghold NM system might help with this... I have a feeling the Recall spells will become a little more used in the near future.
2. To do the op, you need everyone in the party to be affiliated with the nation. Hence, to do the Windy op, we'd need 6 people who are all affiliated with Windy [S], have the appropriate rank and have the op active in order to actually enter the battlefield. This takes a little more coordination compared to Assault.

Personally, once Hades gets control over Castle O[S], I plan on grabbing 5 other people and spamming that campaign op until I get that earring. After that, it'll be time to switch to Sandy and do the same thing for the mantle!