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After weeks upon weeks of abandoned updates and untold stories, Hanbanana is back! We last left off with an epic journey of the great battle of Yogg Saron, as the J!NX Guild gloriously triumphed over our first ever kill of the Old God of Death. Our momentum was not abandoned there in Yogg's lair, and the team has only grown stronger in the past few months. No shortage of changes have gone about in our group, and we were sad to see a few of our solid raiders leave to pursue other endeavors. Fortunately for us, recruitment has been taking off and we were able to get our hands on a number of amazing players to fill out our ranks.

Patch 3.2: The Call of the Crusade

New content is upon us! With the release of Patch 3.2 our focus has left the Halls of Ulduar and its nine lovely Hard Modes for a new horizon of challenges found in the Crusaders Colliseum. The new raid encounters are a nice change of pace from the trash filled halls of Naxx and Ulduar, featuring only five bosses and zero trash whatsoever! The Call of the Crusade introduces two different versions of its 25 man raid zone: A "Normal Mode" called Trial of the Crusader (ToC), and a "Heroic Mode" referred to as Trial of the Grand Crusader (ToGC) -- but with harder versions of the same bosses.

As you may recall, we had quite the troublesome time through Ulduar primarily due to a large number of departures early in the summer. Unexpectedly losing a hand full of all-star players has a peculiar way of sending your progression performance into a nosedive. It took us a few good months to patch up the holes and recover. We still managed to kill Yogg prior to 3.2, but the majority of our Hard Mode kills were either skipped, or completed long after the competitive push. Things have picked up quite a bit since Ulduar, and I am excited to see us knee deep in the thick of it with Crusaders Colliseum.

A couple weeks ago marked our first victory in ToGC, as we survived through all three phases of the Northrend Beasts for a server second kill! We took a short break last week in ToGC as a number of RL events had us depending heavily on the Reserves for our Tuesday and Thursday night raids. With the full team back in action for Sundays raid, we let the good times roll and set free a mighty keeya face kick to Lord Jaraxxus -- and another server second ToGC kill!!

Papa Gorlath and the 10 Not-Dwarves

After seeing our 25man raids upgraded with a splash of win-filled Doomsauce, it would only make sense to see the 10man Team following suit. Papa Gorlath has done well in putting together the Wednesday and Saturday night Hard mode team. They have overcome unique challenges of their own in the past months to achieve an all new level of badassery. A big congratulations goes out to them on their Rusted Proto Drakes, awarded for completing the Glory of the Ulduar Raider meta achievement... and it didn't stop there. Just last week, they jumped into a Heroic 10man ToGC and achieved a server first Tribute to Mad Skill! This achievement is awarded for making it through the entire zone without wiping more than 5 times. It has been a long road for the 10man team, and I am happy to see them doing so well. Keep it up Papa Gorlath and the rest of the madly skillful 10man team!

Hammer Time

As our time in Ulduar was drawing neigh, the Fragments of Val'anyr had really started piling up in my bags. It was tough to keep going back to Ulduar, but with only a few more needed I had to drag the team through the Halls but one last time. Collecting all 30 shards was the hard part, but the battle was not over. We had to face Yogg once more, but this time w/o the help of all 4 keepers. We left Hodir asleep, as we went on to face Yogg+3 in hopes of coming out of the encounter with a first ever J!NX Legendary. I was on the edge of my seat during phase 3, as the time drew near to toss the unforged mace into the mouth of the beast. A few fat fingers and miss-clicks later Yogg was dead. I thought for sure I had missed my window of opportunity, but alas... there on the blubbery corpse as a shiny new Val'anyr: Hammer of the Ancient Kings! Naturally... I looted it and quickly started my server transfer. Mal'Ganis here I come!!

Things are going mighty fine for the J!NX Guild as of late, and I see even more great things on the horizon. Like crushing our enemies, seeing them driven before us, and hearing the lamentations of the women. We are already hard at work on our next conquest in The Heroic Alliance Champions. Tune in next week to hear about all the excitement added in the most recent Patch 3.2, and the revitalization of one of the most memorable bosses in WoW history, THE BROOD MOTHER.




::Han