Arrived

After some soul searching, vigorous email discussion, and the release of The Combat Document (Take 2), the Elder geared up and ventured out to take on two instances in the same night - The Black Morass and The Mechanar.

Last time out the Morass broke our spirits a little (hence the soul searching) - it's a time based instance, with very little recovery time and bosses that just keep coming. It's cleverly designed to ratchet up the tension and pressure the further you progress, leading to frayed nerves late in the night.

But this time we dominated, despite Paxmortis being slightly off his game due to an accidental exposure to tofu shortly before the session. Blackheathen tanked and held each boss in his thrall, whilst Neitzsche healed beautifully, keeping not just Blackie but Fugg and Stroeb up for the entire fight. Fugg's hand-crafted axe of mass destruction helped. And Paxmortis, when he was alive, also did a brilliant job taking down wave after wave of Dragonkin.

Aeonus

Stroeb continued her run of drop wins, picking up one of the all-time great Rogue offhands - Latro's Shifting Sword. 1.4 weapon speed FtW. Just need to pick up its twin from MrT now... We also picked up a bunch of other stuff too.

Flushed with success, everyone but Blackheathen managed to die whilst innocently handing in the quests when we pulled approximately 800 crocolisks from the surrounding swampland. Still - that's not a wipe!

Our next stop was The Mechanar. And it has to be said, Stroeb and Paxmortis were almost beside themselves with excitement. For some reason running Mech felt like we had finally arrived. The endgame.

Thankfully we were masterfully led by Blackie, who has been running Mech with <shudder> PuGs! The ultimate test of a tank, no doubt. Neitzsche too had given that a go, and was still bearing the scars of the enormous pressure a PuG places on the healer.

And because of all that experience, we basically took the place apart. There was one small wipe, but that was down to exhuberance more than anything else - we were all having too much fun to bother with stuff like staying alive. After that hiccup, we downed everyone who crossed our path. And for Stroeb, the quality drops were almost getting embarrassing.

Mechano-Lord Capacitus

Gatewatcher Iron-Hand

To celebrate, once we'd finished we all ventured back to Thrallmar and took down one of the Big Guys...

Fel Falls

(If you look carefully, you'll see the Triangle of Death in action. Kind of like the Lakers' triangle offense, we deploy Blackheathen up front, whilst Fugg and Stroeb attack from behind in order to maximise the Combat Table. If none of this makes sense - read the Combat Doc!)

The reason

This is (one) reason why Seventy is worth it...

Freedom

Purp'

Forgot to mention that the Guild got it's first Purple drop the other night - the Elder picked up the pattern for the almighty Unyielding Girdle. wOoOt!

Bada-ding!

First Stroeb, then Paxmortis, both made 70 on Thursday night. Stroeb's final chosen victim was to be Durn the Hungerer, scourge of Nagrand.

Durn for 70 ftl

However, with the rest of the Elder in tow, 46XP for the kill didn't quite cut it, so a random wandering Ogre ended up with the honour!

Ogre for 70 ftw

The group then proceeded to a wipeless rampage through Sethekk Halls. Stroeb's newfound level went a bit to her head, leaving Neit and Pax to cut her down to size temporarily.

They're bigger

But all was well that ended well, as she was rewarded by a very nice set of shoulders.

Assassinating Shoulders

GM Paxmortis, in typical imperial fashion, swatted aside an unknown foe to make it, barely pausing for celebration before continuing on his chosen path. Alliance Lords beware, Paxmortis and His Elder have arrived...

Blood Elf Skins

Not content with trying on Humanity, Stroeb & Paxmortis attempted a little Blood Elf action over the weekend...

Blackheathen stares in horror at BE Stroeb & Pax

Stroeb's BE Mage and her bodyguards

Flesh!

The Elder had a very weird experience last run - through the wonders of The Caverns of Time, we once again became...Human! Alliance scum!!

Look at all that...flesh!

Fittingly, no-one but Stroeb seemed to be improved. Blackheathen sported a rude flat-top, Paxmortis a mullet, and Neitzsche was his same charming self. As for Fugg...

Fuggly

Stroeb on the other hand had metamorphised into a great beauty, which was to come to her aid at the end of the night.

Stroeb feels the wind in her hair

The Caverns sent us to Old Hillsbrad Foothills, back in time, before the Forsaken were spawned. Our mission was to release current day Horde leader Thrall from his captivity in Durnholde Keep. We wreaked savage fury on the keep for imprisoning mighty Thrall, setting their hovel alight. Alas poor Thrall, still behind bars, had to put up with a spontaneous display of what the human's call "dancing", while we waited for Paxmortis to overcome a bout of arcane disconnectivity.

What humans do

Once again we had completely worthless boss loot, though we did work out that based on our drops to date, we would have the best equipped Druid or Pally in the game if they were with us.

Blackheathen unveiled a genius Engineering tool - the Field Repair Bot 110G, which allowed us to repair on the fly, and even purchase some nice reagents mid instance.

Repairbot FtW

And, a romance thought long impossible was rekindled, as Stroeb bashfully presented her true self to her once and future love.

Reacquainted

This was the only time they could be together, human to human. A long night of fishing lay ahead...

RodB

On Sunday 4 May, in memory of a guild member who passed away IRL, the legendary Hunter BigRedKitty, in tandem with Ratshag, held the inaugural Running of Da Bulls. An epic first level Tauren herd assembled at Camp Narache to commemorate BRK's fallen comrade, and to run all the way to Hammerfall! It was incredible. Sprinthammer (CMcG), Meatax (CW), and Neitzsche (MM) all partook. The screenshots pretty much tell the story...



The Barren's had never seen anything like it. No time for Chuck chat, though there was one legendary "LF800M WC" callout as we ran through.



The Zeppelin was ridiculous. Despite missing the first Zep, the later runners all managed to pretty much catch up as the early wave (including Meatax and Sprinthammer) were wiped by the Silverpine Wolves.



At this stage of the race, Meatax was actually in with a chance of winning. He'd taken a strategic veer to the left through the lake surrounding Fenris Isle. Alas, the splitting of the herd into smaller subherds meant that the natives managed to finish solo runners off pretty fast, so we were drawn back into the main herd - which was much more entertaining than running point!



It was hilarious seeing questing toons stand completely stunned by what they were seeing. Note the Ally in the shot below...



That same Ally decided to take matters into his own hands in Hammerfall...and somehow 500 level 2's (most had levelled on the trip) managed to wear him down to 50% before he was polished off by a friendly Horde protector.


The original plan had been to port to Shatt - but when the Mages failed to show, the cry went out - to Ironforge!





Of course the Ironforge natives finally overwhelmed the majority of the herd, but the ghost herd that formed was just as xool.


Alas Sprinthammer found her final resting place in the halls of Ironforge, not quite able to make it to the tram for the trip to deepest darkest Alliance territory, Stormwind.


But apparently some did indeed make it - For the Herd!

Big thanks to BRK and Ratshag for organising. And sounds like the next event is already being planned...