Failing towards victory: Banana Force M

In 2009, their mission began. Three bloggers, out to “compete” (/airquotes) in the arena tournament, for the promise of prizes for participation. Pondering the big questions, like “where is my Moonfire keybind,” and “how the hell did they just get off a heal,” and “what if we run into someone who reads our blogs?” They are…

Banana Force M, proudly failing their way to a murloc. What could possess a team to have such a silly name? Simple: we took a component of each blog name to form the title of this tri-national arena team:

• Siha, of Banana Shoulders, representing the Deep (Really Deep) South, hailin’ from Australia (and feeling kind of dirty because we’re making her play a blood elf instead of her usual human),
• me, of course, reppin’ for the U.S. of A., (and unnecessarily crippling my team further by playing a class and spec I’ve never played before, an Arms Warrior), and
• Llanion, of Mad Cow Chronicles, holdin’ it down for the Great Frozen Northlands of Canada.

We entered with one goal in mind: to win a murloc! Specifically Murkimus the Gladiator, the prize for playing 200 matches. We have no illusions of making it into the top 1000 in order to get the Vanquisher title (as I think I mentioned after viewing our rank last night, “all we need is for 1,325 teams to be worse than us and we’re in”). But by <deity>, we’ll get that fishman!

Some highlights:

• Realizing that our team name sounds like some kind of 80’s cartoon superhero combo, and reacting accordingly:
  
• Llanion killing a death knight in single combat. (He was so proud, it was adorable, sort of. To be fair, the death knight kept spamming Chains of Ice despite diminishing returns, was in full Deadly Gladiator gear, and apparently had forgotten where his/her strangulate button was.)
• Is something missing here? (Click to embiggen)
  
• Leaping onto the tomb in the center of the Ruins of Lordaeron to /chicken at a priest on a team that was just cowering in the doorway. Luckily, we won, so I didn’t look like a huge idiot.
• OH SHIT BEES!
  
• Losing to teams with such names as Just Here For The Murloc, ThisWasTheOnlyNameLeft, WERE ALL GUYS IRL LOL, and Crazy Cat Ladies.
• Beating teams with names like Two Jews and Marcello and the Power Rangers.
• Look, ma, we briefly had a winning record!
  

Sometimes you roflstomp over the other team, sometimes it is you who gets roflstomped. We’re all very zen about it, and we really do win our share of matches. Despite having a losing record, I freely admit I expected to be doing a lot worse – Llanion claims to be terrible at PvP, I’m playing a class I never played before, and Siha’s the only one with any extensive experience on our team.

Also, impromptu dance parties.

1/3 of the way done. We’re almost there! Our squishy little metal murloc is in our reach! \o/