Until recently, our raid leader Earthsong likened his time spent with 24 other people and the heroic 25 man faction champions in Trial of the Grand Crusader to such a torrid experience that he would rather repeatedly punch himself in the unmentionables for an hour than go up against these gankers from hell. With a few notable exceptions (we doff our caps to Revelation) we are not terribly gifted in the PVP department either, which was compounding our misery.

However, we're pleased to say that this week we were able to triumph where we were previously falling short. No longer were warlock kebabs and sliced mages on the menu with a rampant rogue skewering them, nor did the melee mobs turn our usually resilient raiders into flat pancakes with lashings of humilation syrup. Indeed, the usual immediate wipefest was off the menu.

We survived rather longer in our pitched battle against these foes. Twenty-six minutes to be exact, which was probably the longest boss encounter I can remember. Certainly keeping it going for twenty-six minutes is a boastable feat in a wide number of circumstances, particularly at our age. We had a change of tact for the fight which was the key to our success.

In the spirit of "si credis, omnia fieri potest", thus rather than fear PVP we embraced it. Many of our raiders changed their spec for this fight to pick up talents which aided survivability, kiting and control, and this duly paid off better than an English MPs expenses claim. At the end of the fight, even Earthsong commented that with this new approach, even he enjoyed the encounter. I'm sure his unmentionables are happy.

So why the kittens you may ask? Other than the obvious demeaning Alliance pus^H^H^H cat connotations, the faction champions corpses vanish quite quickly at the end of the fight and all we're left with is a chest to loot. Ask yourself, does the Internet really need yet another picture of a raid group standing in the Trial of the Crusader with just a boring loot chest, or do would we rather see more kittens on the Internet. We chose the latter. Enjoy.

Speaking of loot, we were rewarded with the following heroic-level shinies:

Dual blade butcher - Llyrath
Juggernaut's Vitality - Hourni
Sandals of the Mourning Widow - Helaith

Congratulations all round, and as Thrall himself would say, "well done, Horde!".