A dark hallway...shrouded in darkness...total silence... I wouldn't go there for all the money in the world!

Those ads who say 'This housewife made 1000$ in a day! Find out how!" There's soooo much of them

- I have to disagree on this one. Temporary truce upon the Gold Box notification is more of a tradition than a stereotype. It gives everyone a fair chance of catching the box, and IMO it's a 'knightly' thing to do.

Every time I see a spider I tell my dad to kill it - Its because I don't like killing living beings ok. 40% honest.

The style and design suspiciously resembles that of Yiso... And shouldn't you post the pics of the photoshoots?

Who doesn't like gleaming boxes packed with material goodness? My boxes :''''''(

The Yamaha piano my neighbor is selling, but then not selling, and then selling, and then changing her mind again...

When you have a frail XP camping there, having meticulously placed mines everywhere, and then a Freeze spawns right next to you...

Trinity, Defiant, Inferno

http://en.tankiforum.com/index.php?showtopic=171431&p=4799122 A professional photoshoot. Was boring and long, but the results were worth it. Mebe.

Luckiest WO5, became reporter at that rank. Unluckiest, well...I don't have one. Yet.

I had always been wondering who was the professional writer behind those official posts... Welcome and looking forward to knowing you more :)

Uh...yeah...no idea why you're telling me that.

:D Its French for farewell. People use it because it's fancy-smancy :P

What's with the title.

Whoa whoa, stop right there! There's already the Newspapers Summary - The Archives So save yourself the hassle :P

Your younger siblings have good taste :3

Combo of the Month Kevred Note: Unfortunately, my fellow co-worker Shedinja has, over the course of the last month, contracted the rare and severe cannotstopwritingus syndrome. He has been promptly shipped off to the faraway mountains of Yukon, in the hopes that, after spending some time with gold rocks, he will learn that procrastination is the only TRUE way of life and is what brought humanity to become rulers of Earth, which will hopefully cure him of his case. More news next month. My First Thoughts I never liked heavy/medium hulls. They're slow, big, slow, bulky, ugly, slow, useless, slow, annoying, fat, slow, and, on top of all that, they're slow. Thus, the first thoughts I had when I first used it in battle were all in caps, had more stars than the American flag, you get the point (especially when I flip just as the Gold Box notification appears; but that's another story). As such, for the sake of keeping the content of this article PG, you are asked to disregard the above paragraph and pretend you read nothing. A fresh start sounds great, no? Killing Stuff I remember I M1'd my Hammer simply a few months ago for the same reason as everyone else: it was fresh out of the factory, and curiosity was at its highest. In any case, it was definitely not the best buy of the century. First of all, it's not quite easy to determine the range of Hammer and whether you're hitting your opponent or not. Contrarily to other short-range turrets, 'PageUp' or, in the case of mac users, 'Q', won't work for Hammer. Thus, the question most tankers ask themselves when manning shotgun is "to press spacebar or not to press". Honestly, I was nostalgic of the good ol' days, blowing everything up with Hornet/Twins. In comparison, Dictator/Hammer isn't even capable of taking out a M1 Wasp! The truth is, *lowers voice to not hurt feelings of rejected Hammer*, Hammer's damage output simply isn't up to the task. It usually took the entirety of the three shots to take out a Hornet, the most common hull in the game. Even on Double Damage it still required two blasts, which was too much. So, the last sliver of hope was beginning to disappear, when I went for last resorts. One last chance for the combo to prove that, yes, they can rekk stuff. Clutching on to hope, I decided to try out one of the best Tanki tactics out there, and the one that brought Hornet/Twins to stardom: circling. The fate of the combo in my hands, I mounted Hammer, geared up Dictator, covered it with the purple diamonds of Helper, and rolled out into the sunlight as the crowd cheered and applauded. But everyone went silent when an enemy, the dreadful Hornet with the vicious Isida, appeared from behind a building. The audience's tensity vibrated through the air, for this was the moment of truth. The greatest, and maybe the last play of Dictator/Hammer. No one dared to even blink; the atmosphere rumbled with nervousness. Brave, determined and carrying the hopes of an empire, time slowed down as I charged towards the enemy, fingers ready to thrust onto the left-right arrow keys, aaaaaaand.... Oh wait, I forgot Dictator sucks. Never mind folks! I got completely destroyed! Nothing to see here! No, I'm not joking: taking an enemy on a 1v1 in an open area, no matter the combination he's using, is pure suicide. Even a 7 AM waking up Shaft can catch up to and surpass Dictator in a circling standoff. The level of failure-ness is especially high when it comes to Isidas; as previously mentioned, Tanki's shotgun turret's DPS (Damage Per Second) isn't high enough to counter Isida's self-healing. In fact, it can't even compare to Firebird or Freeze. Apparently, the close-range shotgun sucks at close-range. *DUN DUN DUN* Useless at long ranges, slightly less useless at close-ranges: I could just end the article here and call it a day. However, I wasn't going to give up so easily (but trust me, I really wanted to. The only reason I didn't is for my friend Sheddy. I couldn't let him down!). From personal experience, I knew every combo has a tactic with which it shines, and my task was to find the Dictator/Hammer's (along with smashing my computer because I'm too used to Hornet's drift so I keep driving my Dictator off edges and flip). The Game Styles Ambushing Here he comes...an expecting enemy tank. Hehehe...my Hammer will turn him into dead meat. Wait for it...he's almost here...wait for it...and...CHAAAAAR- OH WAIT IT'S AN ISIDA DARN IT I'VE MADE A MISTAKE ABORT MISSION ABORT MI- Peek-a-boo-ing *waits midfield, behind cover next to enemy base* *pops out, shoots enemy* *hides* *pops out, sees Isida approaching with Double Armor* NOT AGAIN! MAYDAY! MAY- As you may have guessed from the above very slightly exaggerated depiction, peek-a-boo-ing isn’t our combo’s cup of tea. Sure, you can get some hits on enemies without taking any damage yourself for a while, but as soon as an Isida (or pretty much anything that does more than 1 hp per shot) finds you, you can forget about that awesome D/L record you were trying to beat. I had a D/L of 34! 34! And then an Isida rams me and steals my hp through my Double Armor! I could've finally gotten a REAL record in the Tanki World Records! Hit-and-Run Eureka! I found it! I found the tactic at which this month's combo excels at! I might have grown a beard in the meantime, but I finally found it! Yes, indeed, Dictator/Hammer's secret lied in the classic hit-and-run tactic. Jump out of cover slowly drive out of cover and hope to not flip in the meantime, storm the enemy base drive into the enemy base, trying to keep up with the rocks and still hoping to not flip in the meantime, then hit as much enemies as possible with three loads of iron-strong pellets, then run when you recharge (‘Run’ in the figurative form, of course. If you’re using Dictator, you’re not going to be doing much running). With this well-known but rarely used strategy, I managed to defeat a lot more tanks, compared to the other tactics, at least. (What can a Hammer do against five Isidas? But let's look on the bright side: the Isidas were too busy healing each other to bother killing me.) Of course, the sloth pace at which I was cashing in kills was getting more frustrating by the minute. Just like any human, I eventually gave in and began drugging around the clock. With Double Damage, I was expecting to nab a bunch of one-shot kills, but, obviously, just like always, Hammer pretty much let me down for the quintillionth time. As mentioned before, it just so happens that Hornet has just enough hp to require two drugged shots from Hammer before exploding into a million pieces, wasting much of Double Damage’s potential. It wasn't too troublesome though, so I kept drugging (and ignoring the angry enemy team in the chat). With twice the firepower, I could manage to kill one or two tankers on my ‘hits’ before needing to recharge on my ‘runs’, compared to the usual 0.5. If you read between the lines, you'd know that at this point if wasn't about trying to get a win - it was about trying to salvage a loss. I said everything I needed to say about Hammer’s ability to kill stuff: it can’t. Simple as that. So let’s move on! *said in overly-enthusiastic Dora the Explorer voice* Heart stricken with hopelessness, I joined a Serpuhov Capture the Flag, prolonging the long-winded day of failures and catastrophes. But a miracle happened! Ha (I'd say 'sike', but I feel like vomiting every time I see that word). You were expecting me to say that there were no Isidas in the opposing team, that I wrecked everyone with my blasts, that I brought my team a series of five victories, that I saved the inhabitants of Serpuhov from an alien invasion and that using the combo I uncovered a global conspiracy and discovered that Darth Vader isn’t Luke’s father? Keep dreaming, because it takes more than a miracle to save Dictator/Hammer from the literally negative rating I’m going to give it. (Oops, spoiler alert!) The saddest part is that I’m not even joking. The rather 3vil and cool-looking machine is polished dirt. Imagine spending twenty seconds merely to reach the other end of the map, then getting shot at right off the bat by a Ricochet too far for you to reach: Then, having your health nearly entirely depleted on your way to him and shooting him half-heartedly because you know it’s useless since he’s a Titan and there’s five Isidas on his team. I mean, seriously?^ They were literally stumbling upon each other to get to me first. Wouldn’t you feel like swearing at the game and calling everyone a noob too? not that I did that, because, I’m nice and I respect my teammates. btw, completely off topic, don't listen to SipoComp_1 if he tells you that I called him a noob. Just look at his beady eyes, his messed up hair, and his M0 Railgun and M0 Hornet; he's clearly gone nuts. These were my end-game results: For comparison, these are the end game results of the following match in the same battle, same map, same average level of modification, and around the same amount of drugs used, but this time with Thunder/Hornet: Catching Golds From the overly-nice-and-enthusiastic-children-show-narrator-who-is-surely-only-so-enthuastic-because-the-show-producers-have-her family-hostage's perspective (warning: traumatizing content): Its just another day in Candy Fluffy Land...the nice and happy Dictator/Hammer is taking a stroll through the candy cane forest...Oh look! What is that? *children reply in unison*: "It's a Gold Box!" Yes, it looks like its a Gold Box! *children cheer "yaaay"* What should he do? *children answer: "take the Gold Box"* Louder! *"Take the Gold box!"* Great idea! Quick, nice little purple Hammer/Dictator, go find the nice and pretty gold mark on the grou- NO DON'T FLIP YOU MORON! From the Dictator/Hammer's (me) perspective: Playing Parkour I still hate parkour. My Rating Is Dictator/Hammer good at defense? No. Is it good at offense then? Neither. is it good at midfield? Not exactly, but at least it doesn't fail miserably anymore. Then what is it good at? It's good if you're looking for an excuse to buy a new computer. Dictator's rating: 0/10 Hammer's rating: 0/10 Final rating: 0/10 Yes, yes, I know, I can't let myself be guided by emotions, you need to think like a Vulcan, be logical, blablabla, etc. etc., *insert more meaningless stuff here*. Fine. I'm going to have Dora come over and she's going to give you my rating instead. The extremely optimist rating of the definitely not optimist combo of this month is...0.5/10. THAT'S BEING VERY GENEROUS, SO SHUSH. That's all folks. No, that wasn't a 'joke' rating. That's the real, thought-out rating. Dictator/Hammer really doesn't have any desirable qualities. The morale of this article? Trying to make a two-word long article ("it sucks") longer than a thousand words is harder than listening to the entirety of Hog's Monster parody video. I swear, I bet next month Shed's going to have a super good combo, like Railgun/Hornet or something. That always happens, with the luck I have.

It's called college over here. Don't know what you guys turned it into.

So you're advertising yourself via a giveaway.

Well, Canada's out of the World Cup, but...yeah. What everyone else said^

*innocently puts hand into pocket, holding a shape resembling a gun* I never ever said I liked Parkour, riiiight? *smile*

Actually, you've got a point there. (not that you were trying to make a point :D ) Convo clubs do include discussion clubs :l

That'll never happen.