The =ISK= War-Wagon rolls along.

Welcome to squaddies and guests alike.

Now that our hangovers have…. well, hung over, and the meaning of the word ‘resolution’ has reverted to what your monitor does, it is time to look forward to double-oh-four.

Anyone who has read previous Scuttlebutts will know about Team Sabre, Typhoon Rising, BF1942 1.6 and BF Vietnam, so I won’t bang on about it again. <ISK Squad cheers in unison>.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been getting our DC kicks on Capture the Flag and the server seems to fill every night. It isn’t just the game though. MrNiceGuy=ISK= is doing a sterling job in selecting maps, playing to the crowd and, frankly, living up to his name. Take a bow Nicey. Makes my job as Recruitment Officer so much easier when we’re this damned popular. We are proud to claim we have the biggest DC server in the UK and arguably one of the largest servers in the world (well, top five at least :p)

Which reminds me:

New DC recruits since the last bulletin:

Harmarr Superstar=ISK= (it really is him), Private P.Arts=ISK= (now he’s a big lad), Lt. Anderson=ISK= (bullet time) and 3of5=ISK= (some kind of ‘Trek thing going on there). ....and of course, not forgetting the lovely Missus=ISK= on the BHD team (pink carebears???).

All fine players, and it is a real honour to have you guys and gal on board. Try not to make me look too bad, I do a good enough job of that myself <aim waits for contradiction but no-body speaks, tumbleweed rolls by and you can hear a gnat fart>.

We are still recruiting for BHD, DC, BF1942 and will be looking to recruit for Typhoon Rising & Battlefield Vietnam in the next few weeks. Register in the forums and post your application form to apply.

Doper=ISK=, meanwhile, is now running an even better BHD server (ISKSQUAD. COM) and continues to build on =ISK= Squad’s reputation for fair play, courtesy and fun. Match offers and requests for friendlies are coming in and it looks like a busy winter for the team. Sharpen those nasty knives boys and girls. Yes girls! Oo-er, no wonder the BHD squad has so many allies, which leads me to announce our newest BHD allie's ...BOB (Band of Bastards). See you in the bar gents!

Matches

Legionaire=ISK= Lt Deadpie=ISK= are our match officers for BHD & DC/BF1942 respectively. If your squad would like a friendly or a skirmish. Contact them in the forums..

Ok, time to stop blathering and give a try-out to another hopeful. See you on the battlefields. le

Merry Christmas

Before you get this instalment, we’d just like to say all everybody have a very very happy Christmas and a lag-free, frag-filled New Year.

Everybody’s Having Fun

Desert Combat 0.6 Looks like the Canine’s Cahones. Strap yourself into a little bird (oo-er) and zoom off the deck of the Nimitz. Oil Rigs has got to be one of the most beautiful (if slightly confusing) maps this side of the Mappa Mundi.

There may be some issues regarding lag on one or two of the new maps and possibly the balance needs a tweak, but DC has shown itself yet again to be head and shoulders above the crowd.

Look To The Future

Just around the corner is Battlefield 1942 1.6, bringing choppers to WWII with the Flettner Kolibri, as seen here on the new Aghelia map. Other imminent arrivals:

Kattenkrad half-tracked motorcycle.

.50 calibre mounted mg on Jeep.

IL2 Sturmovik (YESSSSS!!)

Flettner Kolibri

The modding community we salute you:

Desert Combat 0.40 is sublime. ‘Outskirts of Basra' is a masterpiece; it brings the claustrophobic nature of street warfare alive. The new sounds of ricochets, explosions and gunfire are impressive and add so much to the experience. Check out the SAM launcher in the Oilfields map.

The first kill with the forklift truck gets the lucky winner a year's supply of stick-on moustaches from this scuttlebutts sponsor:

If you are missing the barbecues of just a few weeks ago then try the F-105 cookbook & taste the real Napalm.
Click here for a well and truly overdone quotation.

EOD 0.20 hit us straight between the eyes.
Improved guns, better mapping and flight modelsmake EOD as smooth as silk. Ride of the Valkyries has never sounded so good as when you skim the trees in a Huey.

Can Battlefield Vietnam next year beat this?

Asta and Mac_Spliff have been busy…true to the beginnings of the squad the have picked up the Delta Force baton and have the nucleus of a Black Hawk down team we welcome our new BHD recruits Doper, Viking1Be, Venom, M@gic, The Boy and Legionaire. It's good to have you with us chaps!

The BHD squad is still recruiting and if you think you have what it takes, we might well take what you got. A match officer will be appointed soon….and by the looks of the posts in today's forum it'll be Doper=ISK=.

We now have a BHD server up and running under the name ISKSQUAD.COM most nights on Public Games, courtesy of Doper.

Your ISKSQUAD.COM server stats can be viewed here.

Suggested tactics so far have been:

1. Kill lots of the other team.
2. Take flags
3. Stay alive
4. Repeat steps 1,2 & 3 until timer or tickets run out.

Well I must apologise for the delay. This new edition of the 'butt should have come a long time ago. It has been a difficult few months round here. Hissy fits, punch ups, name calling and weeping, yes ISK went all menstrual and for a while things looked a wee bit frayed around the edges. Then like Shaun Ryder wearing a silk nightie, our guardian angel and imperious leader Pompey descended from the land of ladyboys. He firmly wedged the tampon of righteousness up ISK's bleeding orifice of despair, gave it 2 paracetamol and slapped it around telling it not to be so silly and emotional. He then bought ISK some chocolate and made it a cup of tea. ISK put down the breadknife of self destruction and wept in Pompey's gentle arms. That was some time ago and now ISK is fighting fit. Aims night terrors and bedwetting have mostly subsided, with only the occasional accident, Diesels physiotherapy is going well and MrsCake .... well cakes has a few problems of the psychological sort but those that know him realise this is his norm. To enervate ISK we have brought in some new blood, so welcome Webby, Rogue, Diveboy and Embolism to the ISK collective. Just dont forget whos the daddy round here ;).

Movies lie. Its true you know, cos Hollywood is always trying to rewrite history, biology and physics into a grotesque charicature where yankees always win. Lets face it they wouldnt be so keen to fund these overblown overbudgeted overacted lumps of pap to see the reality of just how crap they are with history (didnt they get their arses royally kicked in Pearl Harbour?), Biology (this refers to most american porn films where pressing hard on a womens clitoris with your calloused thumb makes them orgasm), and Physics (I was thouroughly dissapointed with the particle effects on Toy Story 2, to such a point where I have threatened all the animators with pigs intestines sent through the mail.) The genre of movies that lie to us the most are the Nam movies, cos I know for a fact Napalm smelled during anytime of the day stinks of burning babies, Charlie DOES surf and Poontang definately isnt a real word. Hey sorry to shatter your illusions. Nam movies may be liars but bloody hell they are one of the most stylised and oft quoted movies, steeped in 60's and 70's soundtracks, claustrophobic jungles, bancock whores and copious amounts of mindbending drugs that ensure that if the user survives the war they will revert to Rambo style flashbacks when passing cars backfire. Eve Of Destruction perfectly captures the zeitgiest of the era, with faithful reproductions of Hamburger Hill and erm .... other famous battles. There is even porn on some levels in the form of the Playboy centrefold of '69 on one map. The mod is only 12% complete but it already seems more coherent a mod than that of Desert Combat. Will you play as the Communist VC or the gung-ho Americans. Well complete the following sentence to find out.

Charlie. Distinct lack of surfing.

We have all been there, cardboard tube gripped in sweaty youthful palm which was swung with wild abandon at your younger sibling, uttering the words “Join me Luke for I AM your father!” in a false basso voice. Some of us have gone one step further by putting down Jedi as our religion on our polling form. Jedi’s are inherently cool whether they are spouting extremely quotable bollocks, doing amazing acrobatics while battling asthmatic blokes in dark robes or sending thousands of laser blasts back to the sender with a languid sweep of their light sabers so I nearly dropped my Wookie when I heard about this!!. Imagine the grandeur of the BF1942 engine rendering AT-AT s, AT-STs and Snow Speeders, recreating the now legendary Battle of Hoth. Imagine a skirmish between you as a Jedi and an Imperial shock trooper. He tries to keep his distance and take you out with a well placed hit to the head using his repeater rifle while you send the volleys back in his general direction, striving to get close enough to deliver the coup de grace. Imagine Carrie Fisher in a metal bra! RAR!

Imagine no more and feast your sacs of vitreous humor at the http://www.swbattlefield.jolt.co.uk/ . They are in alpha testing right now and the general feeling about is that it might have a public release very soon. This is one young Padawan who can’t wait.

Good news on the client side modifications front! EA and DICE saw the error of their ways, changed the patch details and then declared the error was ours, they never intended to get rid of client side mods and said that there will now be a choice for server admins to allow mods or not, cough cough allegedly. (Those nine little letters!!! Saves me a fortune in libel claims). The problem with this is if a lot of servers have the no mods box checked then again the community could have a slight schism on its hands. Power to the players!

To celebrate why not download this http://www.bf1942files.com/file.info?ID=13216

This is Rebel Recreations latest texture mod for the Wake Island map. Check out the funky screens on the link of the new camouflaged def-guns and bunkers, as well as a new and convincing corrugated iron shack. Apparently the textures have been lifted straight from photos of Deadpies luxury shanty ;-))

Desert Combat 0.3 has become part of the staple gaming diet here at ISK and to reflect this the server will, on occasion, host DC. You want Smacktard free 0.3???

You know where to come. Please ensure you have all the maps that we do for both DC and BF1942. Please. No really!

The main people affected are Merciless Creations and our own budding ISKinners, Lt.Deadpie and Stuka who make up the Rebel Recreations team. Both teams have garnered acclaim for their work on improving the substandard skins present on the vanilla version of BF1942, and for altering the revisionist history to something more accurate such as changing Operation Market Garden from a Germany Vs US conflict to Germany Vs Blighty. The only way either could possibly continue is to make it a server side modification like DesertCombat. This would effectively divide the community into those with the skins and those without as only those with the mod could physically play against each other. To vent your outrage against EA and Dice please visit here

Right now we have all that nastiness out of the way we need to get on with the more pleasant business of welcoming our newest recruit Niall=ISK= a strapping young buck from Ulster with exquisite taste in porn ;-). Good to have you around mate! You will fit right in.

Right Pub!!!!

How about a big ISK welcome (sans Mrs Cakes streaking this time) to our newest recruits Steven Cygale who hails from Paris the capital of France, and Nemesis who currently resides in London the capital of Mary Poppins, Jellied eels and England. Welcome to the Squad boys… drinks are on the house.

And finally we come to the end… I see some of you scratching your heads in an ape-like manner, saying “Wot the Bleedin’ ‘ell is a Scuttlebutt?” Well rest assured its not a condition involving an infestation of genital crabs on your buttock hairs. Its just an old naval term for gossip.

Christ me bum is itching now…. The power of suggestion!