Founded on May 22nd, 1997 by Zedrick and Ben. Slowly began growing, mostly hanging out on the severely old school CTS.Net 2fort_32 server (quakeworld.cts.com for the old skoolers :)) where it was usually a mix of .M's, [CE]'s, [WM]'s, [GP]'s.... basically it was the pub server of choice for the CTS.com IRC clans. At least 50% of the original Marauder (including myself) was recruited straight off this server. Began more organized play in June thereabouts, playing 2f32 versus CE regularly. Continued expanding, until Zedrick was forced by his new job to turn over the leadership duties to me, this now being around July. Continued growing and playing, and stumbled upon something called the Dragon Warz Expansion League, or as it's commonly remembered, DWXL. To be blunt, joining that league was a disaster. In our first outing we lost to ZT something like 4 to 1, and that very night we had a huge fight on IRC which led to me quitting Marauder, which then was laid to dormancy by Zedrick (this now being early September.) 5 Marauders, including BlackJellcap, Goat Eater, Chiqi Monkey, Jonny Rotten, and myself joined [UVM] after that event. But some old .M's would not let poor me rest in peace (;)) and roused me sufficiently that I decided to start .M up again. Sadly, a few outstanding players, foremost being Bleeder, Lawkjaw, Chiqi and Goat Eater decided to stay with their clans that they had joined after our first break-up. (Circa of our comeback was first week of November 97.) But enough old .M's had rejoined that we could begin to build our clan. It was decided then that .M would forever be considered a `capping` clan, eschewing the turtle-style 2fort4 and 4r matches that were occurring at the time. When TF was updated to include a faster scout, we knew our time had arrived. We set out to have the best scouts in all of TF at that time, and I truly believe our DW3 squad had the greatest scout line-up ever conceived, which leads me to my next point, DW3.
We had grown slowly through the end of 97, gaining savvy players, but not really low pinging ones because we were totally ignorant of what the truly top clans had in terms of talent. A much remembered encounter versus a mixed [OSKI]-[REC] squad in the first TF Open that was all lpb left a deep impression on us. We could have the best middle ping players anywhere, but in certain key positions, we HAD to have lpbs, such as certain defensive positions, especially sniper. That being decided, we recruited Infect to rule our loft, and The Quick to solidify our basement defense. Soon after, we joined DW3 in what would be our shining moment that shocked just about everyone.
Our division draw was a mixed bag of a few weaker clans such as [BK] and [SoC], and a couple of tough ones, such as [UVM] and [WM]. We worked our way through our schedule, amassing a nice 7 and 3 record, but not being able to defeat our nemesis [UVM] in either match. We had to face [WM] in a playoff tiebreaker to decide who would win the right to face the much dreaded Iron Curtain [IC] in the first round. We won 6 to 4, and the stage was set for what I think is still one of the biggest upsets in TF history.
To say we were underdogs was an understatement. I don't remember anyone except ourselves thinking we could ever defeat the mighty [IC] which had gone undefeated in it's regular season campaign. But we had a different plan. [IC] capped first on us, and then capped again, putting us down 2 - 0 early in the first round, but our scouts dug away at the IC flag until they brought a single cap out before the first round ended, making it 2 to 1. The second round, we jumped off right away with a 6 scout offense, something IC had never seen before. We avoided the deadly Anfernee sniping us by swimming across at the start of the round, and attacking from the water stairs like a deadly swarm of bees. We fought hard and got the tying cap out quickly, tying the game at 2 to 2, and regulation ended thus, forcing the first overtime in the playoffs. To say both clans were nervous was understating it. Overtime was to be 20 minutes, after which both clans would drop 2 players every 20 minute round until someone capped (first cap wins.) And so we fought on, and with less than 3 minutes to play in the first overtime round, our `thrice cursed` scouts (what Meathook-IC- called us after we had won :)) overwhelmed the IC D and brought home the winning cap. What no one thought would happen did, and after that we began to get more of a following as we continued in the playoffs.
Next we faced the always great Ministry of Pain in a quarterfinal match-up. We played a game but due to some server foul-ups and problems, we replayed the entire match so as to avoid any hard feelings. In the second go-round, we capped after 10 minutes, and held [MP] capless for the rest of the match, winning 1 to 0. After that, we faced a surging Dark Nation [DN] in the semis. After 1 round, the score was tied 1 to 1. But in round 2, our scout offense again got clicking and brought home 4 caps in a 8 minute stretch, leaving [DN] totally stunned, and we won 5 to 1.
The remaining match was the DW3 Championship, against Braveheart [BH]. Unfortunately, it was not quite as competitive as some thought it would be, and our all scout offense terrorized [BH] early and often, snatching 6 flags after just 1 round of play, effectively sealing the game. Overall we won 9 to 4, and we had captured the DW3 Title. We had faced some of the toughest clans in the TF world, and had won with tactics many considered unconventional at the time. Since that time though, the majority of clans in cap based leagues have moved to a larger scout offense, after it was proved conclusively by us that it was possible to crack a heavy D with pure speed instead of blunt force.
Unfortunately for us, the winning of the DW3 title coincided with the end of college, and many of our lpbs left for home and beyond, and our talent level dropped quite a bit. We considered going inactive for a bit, but decided to continue forward and just recruit new talent, and recruit we did, but not with the greatest results. We recruited some players that had bad attitudes, but were talented and helped us win, at the cost of messing our reputation as decent guys quite a bit. We entered ASTFL, DW4, the IGL Teamscore, and the forthcoming Final Apocalypse. Eventually, the internal conflict in the clan ripped us apart from the inside out, and we lost many good players along with the malcontents that had helped bring us down from within. At that time I vowed to myself never to recruit players with questionable attitudes who might create more problems than they might solve. Since then, we've begun rebuilding anew, recruited skilled and mostly veteran players whose attitude towards TF is one of respect rather than indifference and rudeness. We're currently working our way up once more, getting ready to make the transition to TF2 when that appears, but not abandoning TF1 yet. Our talent might have dropped a bit lately, but I think it was a good trade because we have more mature players who play for the sheer fun of it, instead of a `can you top this?' mentality. I really believe we're on the right track once again, playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.
Oh, one last thing...........
We're not perfect, we're not the best, but we're Clan Marauder, and we're proud to be Dot motherfucking M's for life. `nuff said.
Sincerely,
Andres Odella aka Evangelion.M