The Striker16...now that's a kid who's M.O.M material straight down the line. We're like my beloved Detroit Red Wings, we keep finding untried youngsters and misfit talent who turn out to be latent superstars (or older superstars who
think they're past their prime but have several stellar seasons left in 'em) waiting for the right team chemistry. Striker, apologies for still not having your banner ready, you've already gone well beyond earning as good a banner as I can dream up but I'm on banner overload...I promise tonight is banner assembly line overtime night. So glad to have you aboard. Same for you, Clay. Nice to have had the chance to fly with you so much lately, as well as with Dibley and Dem AF.
Dent, your pseudo-resignation is received, rejected, shredded, stuffed into a pipe with some mescaline and burned to a most enjoyable effect, thankyooverymuch. Get over this "taking a break" bit. If I can claw my way into the Top 100 on the dated phone and with the ginky unstable wifi service I have, you, Mr. Level 31, can muster up a few more massacres now and then. You against me with five other "aces" all playing on cutting edge devices while sitting atop AT&T's main tower and we'd still be the outgunned underdogs. Focus on updating your wardrobe, let us decide when you're ready to be put out to pasture in DF, k? And maybe loosen the pocketbook latch just enough for one of the affordable new gen phones suggested here. I should talk, knowing precisely which device I want and not yet shelling out the spondulix for it, but broke NYC poets is broke NYC poets. You eat or you play on a new gadget, one or the other but not both. In summary: there shall be no departure of Dent lest it be over my dead wig.
Von Pay, no trouble understanding why you might be a tad hypersensitive given recent events but like so many others here I read Enders comments and the thought of them being interpreted as insulting never, never would have crossed my mind. It's clear to me that he wasn't thinking of you or anyone else, just trying to help with the spawnkilling avoidance tricks. We all have our own, from timing the retry to fall between tank reloading rounds to sitting and smoldering on the runway until a teammate heeds your call for support and destroys the jerk. (I've been the jerk myself a few times lately and have actively called for enemy planes to come seek and destroy me...or killed a couple planes then parked on the runway and converted back to a plane. There's little I enjoy more in the game than tanking a tank killer, it's what generally motivates me to take the tank in the first place and once having blasted the spawn killer I get back into a plane...after a lite snack of a plane or two for my efforts, on occasion, depending on mission goal.

) I view it like Sniper on Deck; self imposed limited ammo then get back in the air. One more of what we can see is a myriad of valid takes on spawn killing, good or bad. I mentioned spawnkilling again, Bopes, I'm ready for my penance. Please no friggin' Skittles. I'm a SnoCaps man.
Listen all, I created this squadron not merely to provide a retreat for grown-up players to commiserate and swap chat on stuff more compelling than, "What grade are you in?" I created it to see if a truly leaderless, all-voices-equal "commune" could survive without "melting down". Militaristic organization kills individual thought and that makes me sick. A military officer takes orders from some other military guys who take orders from politicians with anything but the philosophies of Sun Fuggin' Tzu in mind. A cog is a cog, however high up in the machine. There are no cogs in the M.O.M machine and maybe that's what gets under some people's skin. Or maybe it's one too many shots of Maker's Mark. These uninvited comments won't succeed in fomenting insurrection here. Move on. (Not thinking of you, Von Pay; you know how I feel about you and The Falcons, you're always welcome)
The point of M.O.M as I conceptualized it was/is to see if a disparate group of virtual strangers in a virtual context could come together and thrive, develop bonds, suss out problems and function through good spurts and bad WITHOUT military structure and without "melting down". M.O.M is an anthropological experiment in an online anarchy. It's the very orderlesness that accounts for much of the fun...and for some of the controversy. But could any other militaristic, order and rank and council based squads hold together the way we have with that sort of anti-system system in place of what they favor? Perhaps. They like vanilla, we like chocolate. That's why there's more than one flavor. Neither is better than the other if you like what you like. We don't do "evaluation programs" or "entry requirements" or "council meetings"....if we like a player's style, his/her "vibe", we invite 'em to say hi. If it feels like good chemistry, they're in. This has made for a mix of personalities I couldn't have predicted. And a group bond so much stronger than anything I thought could develop. Outside the core group I knew would be major anchoring presences; SheiBe, Bopes, Zandor, Tex, Paul, Oedius, et al...who knew we'd luck into people of character as strong as Coop, Muck, Pedrinho, Estuardo/DN, Sput, so many others?
Dent, you and Brian are our in-game leaders. Others have found their natural place as leaders of the nutty exchanges on this thread. That can change at any moment. These dynamics are plastic, flexible, evolving. When I see a post by Muck I know I'm in for a treat just as I did in the early days - and still do - with Bopes and Zandor and Tex. That tag over your name in the game is something special to me, D. I was going to PM this to you but I want the mob to know how I feel; you with no M.O.M tag is a saddening prospect.
On the coming side of the coming-and-going through the revolving door that is any assemblage such as this; I played yesterday with Air Com I Richard Bong. Never mind that it's a hilarious name and I'm dyin' to banner it. This cat was like Pacman, dodging the bad guys and devouring everything else in sight. I'd just played with War-of-the-Worlds who was making a meal out of REID, then along comes Dick Bong and pounds War-of-the-Worlds into the sod. Keep a squad-wide lookout for Mr. Bong and, barring any opposing views/votes, tell him he's in if he wants in. I'd stake my reputation on his being that good. And we all know how much my reputation is worth.

As Dent said, "We're equally as good as the other squads...just a different family." I'd append to that, "We're good
because of our difference." You lot have exceeded any experimental notions I might've originally had. This thing that started as SheiBe's frustration with kids turned into my dabble in human nature? It's stronger, warmer, more familial and more fun than I ever dreamed...much more important to my "real-world" world than "a game" has any right to be. And it's entirely yours. Raise a Labatt to that, and to yourself for having a full, equal hand in making it happen.