It all started in April of 1995 on a dark and stormy night.
Three schoolmates who had moved together to Darwin for university were huddled around a computer trying to make sense of this thing called a 'MUD'. While the lightning crashed outside on a typical wet season night the only illumination inside came from the green lettering on the screen and the dull red blinking lights of a 28.8K external modem.
Inside was silence except the the low volume of the ignored TV and the occasional sound of a drawn bucket.
In the following days Frenzy, then known as Koren, was often seen hunched over the screen typing furiously, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying over what he saw there.
The few times I had the heart to kick him off my PC, my newly upgraded 486dx66 with 20MB of ram so I could play Mechwarrior 2 he would linger around, jumping back on the moment I had finished my orgies of Mech destruction.
Gradually tho we came around and within weeks we all had characters and a timetable of when we could all play to suit our work habits because we only had my PC to play from and travelling down to the uni was at least 500 metres, hence too far..:)
We discovered that you could multi, and our enjoyment grew.
A few months down the track when it became apparent that we couldn't join any of the larger clans on the mud because of our timezone we decided to create our own..
After an 'enlightened' discussion on possible names Screaming Afterbirths was proposed and agreed upon.
We celebrated and when we got back to the PC a comment was passed.
You'll be a Screaming Bucket now.......and it stuck..:)
We all failed uni but did very well on the mud..(no correlation at all :P )
and within 2 years were the dominant clan with 17 members from 7 countries including one guy from Brazil who didn't speak english but was a hell of a lot of fun to try and talk too, 4 MAD swedes, a few yanks, a few norweigans and some other assorted euro's. :)
We stayed on the mud on and off for another 2 years and the core group of the Buckets formed from that.
Myself, Frenzy, Mr Jiggs and Evil Angel.
We hit doom 2 and did well there myself coming 2nd in the Doom 2 comp that was run by NT Comics back in 97.
We did quake dm for a while but then found TF.
Quake TF became our lives for the better part of a year and while we didn't actually war we topped most maps we played, we lanned amoungst ourselves via null modem cables for a fair while and then all got network cards and coax'ed for years every weekend.
HL didn't interest us much and while some where dallying with HL TFC I found a mod that was gaining popularity called 'Counterstrike'
We tried it out and found that we liked it.
That was late '99 because in early 2000 I was still convincing people that their toasters wouldn't explode because of Y2k.
We got a bit serious towards the end of '00 and in 2001 we entered Evo, our first real competition.
The lineup was
CoCo
Frenzy
MrJiggs
EvilAngel
and Empty (now Starscream)
Knowing nothing about netcode or tactics we did quite well.
Winning our first game against CSM 10-6 10-4 (Ha Gobbs ) on dust
we also beat TOD on storm 8-10 10-4 the first time any of us had played the map.
We then had to play the mighty [S]yndicate in the quarters on prodigy and after winning the first 3 rounds we then lost the next 20 to go down 10-3 10-0
We went to the losers bracket and at 12am we were eliminated by WAN and a very pumped up Seqo 10-2 10-2 on inferno.
Overall it was great considering I had us rocking up, playing 1 game and losing and going home in my mind.
The next comp months later at DGA 12 I think we also did ok.
We beat RC in the first round in a double pistol only overtime on nuke and got a bye into the Div 1 final but then had to play DNC on cbble and lost 10-2 10-1 to their superior skill and strats.
We joined the GA ladder and had 10 games there going 2-8 which when compared to the other Darwin/friendly clans (WTE, S, XID)in it we did well getting to ladder position 102 out of 300 in a few months.
Mortar and Duck Duck were added to the roster at his time
Pings and player organisation led me to pull the clan from the ladder in May 2002 with an aim to get back on it at the end of the year.
Since then and after a disappointing war with Xid where we were crushed I decided to renew the clan and get some fresh members in.
We already had several guys that played for us at LANS, VINC and Meph but neither played online.
Milenko and his flatmate CPL Punishment were accepted into the clan
and soon after the well known Daughter of Misery joined as well. Most recently Mojo has decided to come across.
Currently in discussion with two more players and then our ranks will be full for the time being.
We try to specialise in good sportsmanship when playing, ideally when you play -=SB=- in a game you can be pretty much assured of that.
It's always a gg even when we loose.
We are not and never will be an 'elite' clan and fall for all the pretensions and pitfalls that such a clan has with it.
We always aim to become better but also realise that at the end of the day it's all a game and the point is to have fun.
Hope you had a packed lunch when you read this...:)