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Welcome back from the Christmas and New Year celebrations. The year started off with a bang as always with the annual *AUS* Network Lan. Numbers were down a bit from previous years but fun was had nontheless.

We also had the Annual Division awards as well, which actually made it out on time I might add.
The lucky winners were:
Player of the Year: Veeks
MVP: Hobotron
Most Improbed: Recon Element
Mr Consistency: Gossy
Congrats to all those that won an award this year. And good luck to everyone that wants to be in the running this year.

The Alienware comp has also kicked off in January. With about a dozen matches played we've managed to come home with 4 wins in this tourney with some of the losses only being by a small margin. There's still a few weeks of competition left in the tourney so with any luck we can get a couple more wins under our belt and see if we can make it into some finals action.

The GA ladder kicked off for us on wednesday night with our first match again Strenght in Numbers on an old favourite Karkand. Unfortunatly SiN were under strength and we managed to come away with a comfortable victory. GG to the SiN guys for sticking it out and playing without a full team. We look forward to seeing you guys in the competition again.

We also lost a valuable officer in January. BloodRaven, who has been with this clan for nearly 5 years, has stepped down from his position as officer and taking a break from gaming for a while. All of us here at *AUS* would like to thank BloodRaven for all his effort and time put into running the clan and the teams. GG Blood!

From all the officers here at *AUS* we'd like to wish our members and the wider community a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Stay safe these hollidays and we'll see you back on the Battlefield for the start of the ladders next year!

November so far has been one of the busiest months this author remembers, certainly in the last 12 months, but possibly since BF2 was in its prime. We have had a hard to manage influx of trial members of all ages and from varying backgrounds. Some with little to none and some with lots of FPS gaming experience. The net result is that we are able to offer these members as well as our regular members the opportunity to play in all formats of the game competitively. Gamearena and Cybergamer have offered more details about ladders and we currently have enlisted in both. We await news on more ladders opening.

In anticipation of the various ladders opening we have been scrimming and training hard. With more than a dozen scrims under our belt and more scheduled before the month is out we have been developing strategies and learning from other teams which is invaluable. We thank carnage, Legionnaires, Imperium, Strength in numbers and DA for proving tough opposition in formats ranging from 10v10 to 16v16.

There is no doubt that fond memories are flooding back to those who have experienced the larger 16v16 format. The Heavy Weapons Team has been reactivated for this format provided by Gamearena. Our 2 servers are rating well and since the latest patch we can now LOCK and UNRANK when we scrim or train. The community seems stronger than ever with a lot of old school teams registering for the ladders and we look forward to locking horns with old foes once again.

The officer group are vigorously planning the near future, assigning Team leader and 2IC roles for the ladders as well as managing the servers and keeping track of the 15+ new members this month. A change of TS3 server also was on the cards this month due to our alliance with Hypernia and *AUS* would like to thank Mudsy from Gameserverhosting who perviously supplied our TS3 trouble free for more than the last 2 years.

For now we keep training hard and await our first ladder match...

Well finally the moment all of this clan has been waiting for......Battlefield 3!

The release dates were mixed depending on your VPN or proxy capabilities but by the last week end in October we were all waist deep in Dices' latest offering. There were big expectations with the beta and as soon as the game went live those expectations were met ten fold. Initially the clan filled our TS3 server every minute of every day barking orders at each other laughing out loud at what had to be the happiest day for years. The 2 *AUS* servers kicked off offering the community the choice of either a large 64p conquest rotation or the smaller 32p sized rush rotation. These will be tweaked and played with as requests come in and favourites become instilled. 1 week in the game has shown even more interest as have our servers which rank currently in the top 200 in the world...this carries on from our very successful public BC2 servers.

The clan itself is probably stronger than it has ever been in this authors memories. With a recent move of a few regulars the huge influx of trialees sees those loses covered immediately and some. The officer group is negotiating a bigger TS3 server as i speak and the BF3 ladders continue to gain momentum. We, as usual will be offering our members the opportunity to compete in every format ladder the community provides.

There will inevitably be a lot more news next month as we all sink our teeth deeper into what is the most anticipated FPS this side of Siene crossing.
See you on the battlefield!

With the beta rapping up the other day we were treated to some large format BF3 on Caspian Border! The large format 32 vs 32 was a throwback to the old days when BF2 was in full swing with the vehicles playing a large roll in winning the map.

There were no differences to each type of vehicle with you needing to unlock various "add ons" to make you more of a danger and help give you an advantage.

With about 10 days to go until the release of the full game talk has now turned to server hosting with *AUS* set to run a couple upon release.

Keep on waiting guys.. Not long now!!

See you on the Battlefield... 3!!!