This is me, Karl aka Pluckerman immediately after my marriage to Kristi aka Bwa. Finding me with a smile on my face is an extreme rarity, but this day brought the widest smile I've ever had.


I'm one of the few remaining players left from the old PCPowermall days, where Conquest was first created, 5 years ago. Originally, I started off as a quiet but frequent quirky poster in the old forums. My ambitions back then was to merely hit the first page of each set I played in S/A. H/A was never my cup of tea.

After my first couple of sets I began making the first page in S/A with relative ease, this gained me unwanted attention from EE and OTA and other minor clans all wanting me to join them. I politely refused them all. My first friend in CQ was ratch13. We'd regularly have a laugh with each other in the forums and the country to country messaging systems, never knowing who we were talking to, until the set had been finished. Once ratch and I began getting closer as friends, we started sharing strats (which appear to have helped me more than him). Then just as CQ moved to a new domain (FunAuthority) I created my first clan (The Hidden), which was an invitation only clan, mainly used for friends and foes that Ratch and I picked up playing CQ and TroopWars. Our members included Onfire, Silverion, JeffLizard, Jockstrap, Phyr, Ttreat and a couple of others that I can't seem to remember at this time. The Hidden was a short lived (about 3 sets) but successful clan, we won H/A average NW twice and overall once. At the end of our third set together, I had a country lurking in the depths of H/A, using a tactic known now as the farmer strat. Onfire created this strat, but I tweaked it into a strat capable of winning not only H/A but S/A too. Anyway, I cashed in all of my food and leaped from the bottom of page 23 straight up to first place, overtaking either one of Tippers' or Mpm's countries along the way. They scurried with the last few turns that they had and pipped me to the post and won H/A.

Almost immediately after this, both Tipper and Mpm started sending me messages asking me to join tBr. I ummm'd and arrrrrrrr'd about it for a day or 2, and gave them an ultimatum. That anywhere I was to go, Ratch would have to follow. They agreed. So the Hidden clan was no more. I packed my bags and headed for tBr and ratch followed a day or 2 later.

I immediately settled into tBr. All of the original members were very easy to talk to and communicate with. I made good friends with Fubar and Spatuli, as well as Mpm and Tipper. It felt like a home from home. I made several recruitments, our 2 German members Leeroy and Chiron. Ttreat also followed me into tBr.

Ratch and I occasionally got a little restless in tBr though, so every so often we would leave for a little while and create clans together. IQ was one of first clans together. Groinwarmers is slightly more memorable though, not only because of it's name but because of who we recruited as well. Eire, Rarerob and Murphy all became 'nanas.

Other excursions from tBr have included TNB (the New Breed) with Eire, and WoP
(Window of Opportunities) with Milkman, both newbie training clans.


~~to be continued and probably edited several times on a later date.....

~Karl