Gotta love it....

Hey hey! Okay, so I've been terribly slack AGAIN on this and I really need to keep it up to date.

WoW:
I've now moved all my alts over to Sword of Serenity seeing that most of my in game friends have left United Exiles. We're having great fun and most definitely making major progress through the raiding.

We're up to the second to last boss in Naxxramas (which we ARE going to down tonight!!), we're seriously considering trying Obsidian Sanctum (Sartharion) with "One drake up". Last night not being a normal raiding night, I decided to secretly invite the 10 best players in the guild to a fun run at Flame Leviathan in Ulduar - I knew we wouldn't manage to down any of the later bosses, the overall gear for the guild isn't up to it yet. I got to take 8 of the 10 people I initially invited and then had 2 added by request of the normal raid leader "because they're good and rarely get to raid"...... So, these two came into group ponced about for about 45 mins and then had to go in pretty swift succession while we hadn't even cleared all the trash leading up to the boss! Fortunately, by this time one of the two missing original invitees was on and joined us and I filled the last spot with another very reliable and skilled player from the guild.

We killed off the last of the trash with everyone learning their vehicles as we went along and finally got to Flame Leviathan.... oops. Forgot we didn't get to stop for tactics or repairs. Half the group was out of the boss's lock-down area which meant they couldn't take part in the fight. We had a quick practise just to show people what to expect when we went for it for real though. We even lasted a couple of minutes before complete death and destruction! Anyway.... attempt 1 (I don't count that first one as a real attempt) I ran through the tactics and explained as best I could how to do it. We piled in, one vehicle died *very* quickly because they didn't get out of FL's way and got hit by his 200k+ battering ram a few times. Despite that, we kept going and managed to get him down to 40% before we finally got wasted.

Hm.... analysis of what went well and what didn't time. The dpssers that get thrown up onto his turrets were getting pretty badly nuked down... so I swapped one of them for ME. My priest can self heal and do massive damage at the same time. OP? Maybe, but I don't care. He pwns.

Attempt 2: I jumped into Yvaine's Siege Engine and got flung straight at Leviathan. Much nukage later and a funky Achievement, he shuts down and goes into phase 2 (repair mode). We nuke his butt down, rinse and repeat and after only the third turret kill, I look round and BOOM he's dead! Yes, my "noob" guild full of people that haven't managed to clear Naxx 10 yet managed to down Flame Leviathan in half the attempts that a guild of "Uber" players, United Exiles, managed. Oh and we did it without using ventrilo too. Something UE are still trying to do....

So yeah, had a great run a couple of sweet items dropped and everyone was bouyant from the thrill of something completely new. Then, the GM sprung a little surprise on me..... Guild chat: "Please congratulate our newest Officer.... BANDROSH!"
WOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
We went off to Obsidian Sanctum for the first time in a few weeks and rapidly kicked ass all the way through it. More nice gear droppage and people had to start going (it WAS 11.30 UK time after all!)

So... will tonight come even close to yesterday? Unlikely, but with the right group we'll be on for another big step forward for the guild: Full naxx 10 completion. I know we can do it now and I can't wait to see it happen. Fingers crossed!