On Thursday night (10/23) members of Force Recon went with TR to try Kael'thas Sunstrider. He is the final boss in Tempest Keep and it was our first time facing him. I'm pleased to say that we were able to kill him on our 4th attempt.

The fight was difficult but a lot of fun. It includes him sending 7 of his weapons to attack the raid. Once the weapons are killed the raid members are able to equip the weapons and use them to defeat him and his 4 friends.

Here we are in his throne room:

Since many members of the raid were on the quest chain to get the Hand of A'dal title, we also killed Al'ar & Void Reaver in TK and then went to Hyjal to kill Rage Winterchill. At least 12 members of TR got their Hand of A'dal titles that night, including Koriander, Nestra, Terreis and Valasca from Force Recon. We also got some loot - Sleepyeyed won Chronicle of Dark Secrets and Nestra won Leggings of Murderous Intent.

Congrats to everyone who attended, got loot, and got their titles. We hope for several more fun 25 man raids before Wrath comes out in a few weeks.

Force Recon had an exciting fun run with TR last night, downing Lady Vashj for the first time. Yes, the nerf bat hit with 3.0.2 and lowered the HP for raid bosses, but it was still sweet to finally kill her given the heavy amount of teamwork and raid concentration still required to succeed.

Lady Vashj is a three phase fight. Phase 1 is basically just a tank & spank where you try to stay alive and dps her as fast as possible. At 70%, she encases herself in a shield that totally protects her and is created by 4 shield generators surrounding her. During this phase adds spawn on all sides of her platform and need to be handled by the raid. 4 times during this phase a special "tainted" add will spawn and must be killed within 20 seconds or it will disappear. When this "tainted" add is killed, he must be immediately looted. The looting player receives a "tainted core" that must be used to disable one of the generators. The only problem is that the player holding the core is immobilized and must throw the core to another player to get it to move up the platform and to the generator. This is where the coordination is required as players must pass the core like a football up the stairs and across the platform to a generator that hopefully has a player standing right next to it and ready to disable it.

We had been practicing this fight off and on for some time and last night things clicked and we were able to defeat her on just our third try of the night. She drops T5 helms, which Nestra and Falarelle were lucky enough to win.

Here we are with a defeated Lady Vashj:

The night was still young so we proceeded to kill more bosses in SSC. In the end, we defeated Lurker, Tidewalker, Leotheras the Blind, and Fathom Lord Karathress as well. Congrats to Maxtel for winning shoulders off of Tidewalker and to Sleepyeyes and Koriander for winning T5 gloves off of Leo.

It was a fun night to try out our new abilities and to get some good loot for Wrath. Thanks to all who attended and congrats to all who won loot.

Fireworks of red, blue, white, green and yellow lit the sky above the moonwell in Stormwind. Drinks flowed freely and bright colored fabrics caught the light. Members of Force Recon were celebrating their 3rd anniversary in a fabulous party!

Thanks to everyone who attended and brought items to enhance the mood. A special thanks to Nathelien for the fireworks launchers. Thanks to Verdantine and Magnique from our alliances for celebrating with us as well.

Our new tabard was unveiled during the festivities and it looks great! Congrats to the whole guild on choosing it.

Here's one of several screenshots taken during the festivities. If you have screenshots to share, please post them in the forum as well.

*********

On Saturday afternoon we assembled at the gates of Stormwind for a Level 1 death race to Booty Bay. There was much anticipation about this race given how many members were planning their strategies and preparing their racers before the big event. And, sure enough, the race did not disappoint! Racers such as the Pinktwinks and Doodle brought a new level of preparedness to the starting line and left many much intimidated by their impressive stats. Other racers freely embraced the "fresh off the farm" racing strategy, and MiniKori had a pretty blue sparkler!

It was quite an impressive array of ponytails and pink hair!

The race was well run and full of fun commentary by Sleepyeyed, who officiated at the event. The death count was staggering and left all the racers in rags and tatters by the end, their gear broken by the repeated attacks from the panthers and gorillas that constantly seemed to appear out of nowhere. And yes, some of those gorillas were STEALTHED!

Here are the race results:

1. Maxpro (Brostin)
2. Pinktwiink (Valasca)
3. Forcesquishy (Honu)
4. Piinktwink (Ephany)
5. Flash (Eoran)
6. Doodle (Zindie)
7. Minikori (Koriander)
8. Peasncarrots (Gaelynn)
9. Bignestra (Nestra)
10. Yeehaa (Cathleen)

We hope everyone had a great time at the Founder's Day Celebrations this year. Special thanks to our Founder Cathleen for starting this guild and for giving us an excuse to celebrate each year. And thanks to everyone for their continued friendship and support and for making the guild what it is.

Here's to a great 4th year of Force Recon.

Force Recon Rules!

Force Recon’s ZA Team’s First Bear Mount!!

We started Zul’Aman runs months ago with stars in our eyes and dreams in our hearts. We wanted to do as well as we could, but we also held the impossible dream of one day achieving Bear Mounts. These mounts are only granted if you can kill all four animal bosses within a 45 minute timer.

Our first run gave us some success to definitely be proud of with the achievement of the death of the Bear Boss, but we knew we’d have a long way to go for mounts. The first time we killed the bear boss, it took us around 8 minutes, which we found later from the WoWWiki timeline to be well over twice the allocated time of 3 minutes on that boss to eventually do the 45 minute timer run.

So we worked on gear, worked on our strategies, worked on our group synergy, worked on farming and getting consumables, and just plain worked hard. We upped our DPS, upped our Healing, upped our stamina and tanking stats, pulled faster and cleaner, etc. In essence, we tried everything.

The first set of WowWebStats we have from March shows our group DPS of 2,979 for the run. This last run shows our DPS at 5,153, and if you just look at bosses, that number increases to 5,588! This include the decrease in DPS from the final two bosses where there is a lot of time we cannot do max dps due to the fights and boss abilities. We’ve definitely come a LONG way.

On September 5, 2008, all our efforts paid off. We achieved our impossible dream of a Bear Mount, with still 4 minutes on the timer! It wasn’t a flawless run, we still missed one scout getting a few extra adds and we had several deaths throughout the run, but it was a pretty close to perfect run! We had no wipes and 1-shot everything. With our 4th kill on Zul’Jin, we’ve even got him on farm status now!

Here are our boss times for the day:

Eagle – 2:58
Bear –3:04
Dragonhawk – 3:39 (new team record)
Lynx – 3:10 (new team record)

Non-timer
Hex Lord – 4:31
Zul'Jin – 7:31

Here is a shot of us around our lucky roller, Valasca, atop her new Bear Mount:

A big shout-out goes to the entire ZA Roster, who worked very hard over the last 2-9 months to make this moment possible:

Nestra
Koriander
Falarelle
Terreis/Ephany
Valasca
Nathelien
Sleepyeyed
Mixtel
Mightydre
Digren
LLiandra
Forgiven
Rainhammer
Telari
Brostin

Thanks to them, to everyone who’s come along the way, and to everyone who’s been cheering us on. We set out with a goal, and we did it!!!

Kori

On Sunday August 31, Force Recon will celebrate its 3rd Founder's Day. It was 3 years ago that Cathleen started her search for brave adventurers and bound them together into the close-knit group that we are now. Through our Founder's Day celebrations we honor the efforts of Cathleen and all past and present members of Force Recon who have all worked hard to make our guild as strong and vibrant as it remains.

This year we would like to celebrate across two days with two organized events. The first will be a level 1 Death Race and the second will be a Party and tabard unveiling.

Level 1 Death Race
When: Saturday 9/13 at 5 pm server
Where: Meet at the gates of Stormwind for a race to Booty Bay
Rules:
1. Must be level 1
2. No night elfs (cause of faster wisp)
3. Must "corpse run" to rez at your body and not at spirit rezzer
4. No accepting help or rezzes from others
5. No flying gryphons
6. No hearthing
Prizes: The winner and first 2 runners-up will receive cash prizes.

Founder's Day Party
When: Sunday 9/14 at 6 pm server
Where: The Park in Stormwind
Dress: Please dress in a festive and fun way. A party is a time to put aside our weapons and armor and have a good time.
Drinks/Activities: Feel free to bring food and drinks and fun things like fireworks or unusual pets.
Photo: At some point in the party we will pose for a guild photo. Keep that in mind when you plan what you will wear. Please note that clothing will be required for the photo. :)
Tabard: The new tabard will be unveiled during the party so please bring it to put on even if you don't want to wear it with your party clothes.

Please let me know if you have questions or would like to plan additional events for Founder's Day. I have placed both these events in the guild calendar. Please sign up your interest for the Level 1 Death Race so I know how many to expect and can plan accordingly.
Sign-up: http://www.forcereconguild.com/raid_calendar/show/165111

EDIT: The original dates were Labor Day Weekend, which isn't going to work for many people so I've changed to this later week so more people can attend.