Yes, running out of headlines, since I basically start every blab with no notion of what the particular subject is going to be. IF any.

First off, I'm gonna refer you to another "Blabber". Namely Wemmick from "Gamers Xtreme" (http://www.gamers.com). He has a private column on that he Blabs on. The particual "Blab" which caught my eye was the one from Friday, October 2, 1998, which was named: "Why Gaming is Better For You Than School". And yes, I know the subject is rather anarchistic and weird. He does, however, justify his statements quite nicely. It's a fun read, and here's the direct link: http://www.gamers.com/columns/wemmick/

Hrmf, now for what was supposed to be a recap of the last few days' news on the ladder, though it's temporarily on a hold. The reason? My Kali account has been invalidated for some weird reason. Or well... I do suspect that it has something to do with the unfortunate incident the other day where I logged on with the same account on 2 computers at once. As some of you might know, I work in a cyber café, and I have access to some 24 computers where I can be online. Or to say it in another way: If one of the computers is taken, I have to use another, and so I have Kali lying around on a few computers. As the boiler that I am, I forgot to log off on one of them, while I logged on on another computer. (yada yada - ed.). Kali didn't like that, needless to say, and I got slapped with a temporary ban of 1 hour. I did get 315 to act as a mediator, and he set me up with a few ladder matches that night. One of them was with Telamus, which we drew in a rather weird, but good game on Cluster Freak. He actually managed, with some help from my neglecting and boiling, to get back, and on top of the game after I had initial air superiority. In the other game I had, one might say things went just the other way. It was vs. Samiam, and it was on Sail Away, and we both went sea first, which Samiam seems to agree with h0tr0d, CyberDrgn and the rest in that going sea first is the preferred option. I did manage to mess that up quite a bit, by not making enough resources before going into the water, and then gambling a bit by making an early construction ship (this, however, turned out to be my salvation later). I had only managed to build around 5 skeeters, when his 10 arrived, and they kicked me out of the sea without ease. At that point, I had already said "GG", but I decided to play on, and so we did. I made a quick K-bot lab, some resources, headed for the advanced K-bot lab, and started with the Pelican production. The one thing that actually kept me going was that construction ship, which had managed to construct about 5-6-7 underwater metal extractors, without being disturbed at all. Samiam had a head start ofcourse, but it wasn't as big as one would think. But eventually, a great army of pelican's amassed on his side, surrounded my isle, and started attacking. These attacks went for almost an hour with out any rest. He would move around, attack, I would hold ground, we would both re-inforce, and it would go another turn. I had managed to get an advanced shipyard up and running, and made some construction subs. And slowly, I got underwater fusions up. Another thing that saved my fur was that advanced aircraft plant I invested in. I scouted a nuke being built in the bottom right ilsand that he owned. I sent my bombers in, but they didn't make it in the first run. In the next run, I decided to bomb the cloakable fusion standing next to it instead. And in later runs, I got the nuke aswell. I sporadically bombed an advanced k-bot lab on his main island, and in the end got up to 6 or 7 advanced k-bot labs, all pumping out pelicans. I eventually got the upper hand with the pelicans, and soo it was me who was in the attacking position. One thing that had helped me a lot was the construction subs, set on patrol in sites where huge battles had transpired, and the ammount of wreckages was abundant. I eventually got a nuker up and going. That was the true stab of death. This, after a gaming time of about 1:45. Keywords: Underwater metal, Sucking wreckage, advanced Bombers. Minor tactical keywords: NS lasers for backup fire against pelicans. The lasers range isn't great, and they get killed fast by the pelicans, but with a few of your own pelicans infront, guarding them, they are a great investment. Likewise with Destroyers. They are worthless alone vs. pelicans, but standing at range, firing into a bunch of pelicans, they do a substantial ammount of damage.

Ah, seems I let myself get carried away there (No! You think? - ed.). Anyways, this win got me up to a #4 position on the ladder. Oh, and I almost forgot; I signed up on Cases Mplayer ladder (TA ofcourse) too. I got a win vs some guy called Wicked (who seems to have given me a rather low score in both skill and honor, can't think of what I did or say wrong there. Neither can I for the life of me remember what map it was we played on. I did have 2 other matches that day. One with some WRAITH-The Best (think it was him) person, who had to leave the game, just as it was going well for me on Lusch Puppy. The other match was vs EWOK-Chas on Full Moon. I had started on the left side, owned most of the map, had 2 rather big armies attacking from both sides of his relatively small base, when he lost connection to the game. I didn't find him after that game, but it seemed rather obvious a disconnect. Or else he would have contaced me, and tried to explain, and done the honorable thing and reported the game. I know I would have. Nobody likes a non-reporter/disconnector. Though I wont accuse any of these 2 of such a thing. I'm merely venting some anger here... I'M GONNA GRIND THEM INTO FOOZBERRY JUICE, RAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

In other TA related news... Annihilated.com are gradually gonna set their focus on TA:Kingdoms as it draws ever nearer. A decision I can only support, as my thoughts are slowly wandering over to that game aswell. The ever growing question will now be whether or not Cavedog will be making a Gaming Network of their own, similar to Blizzards' Battle.Net. Yeah yeah, I know B.net is known as lamersville, but we'll be sure to make a Gnug channel in there, and ban all lamers :) - 1 Foozberry credit will be admission fee...

Alas, to the Gnug-mobile !!!!!