2002: The Beginning Paul (Major Headache) and Dave (Pte Niles) first met in October 2002 whilst playing Battlefield 1942 and posting on the Battlefield1942.co.uk forums and started chatting on MSN (using the voice software). They soon discovered a lot of similarities in what they were looking for with online gaming; both wanted to get involved in a clan that had no required attendance and a healthy sense of humour. Dave just wanted to get involved with the UK gaming scene, but being Canadian, found that whenever a potential group found out he was canadian, they backed out.

They almost joined a clan called Intruderz but the person running it had too many demands and started messing Dave around with regards to joining, so he decided it wasn't worth it.
At the same time they had also been in communication with a member of the Dunom Mortis [DM] clan called Deadmeat and after the Intruderz fiasco, Dave almost joined that clan.
In discussing it, Dave and Paul still had a few doubts and it became quickly obvious that the only way to get the sort of experience they were looking for was to form their own Battlefield clan.

With an expectation of aiming for around six members, they decided upon a Clan name by combining the Hussars theme with that of the Blackadder comedy series. Paul came up with the idea of choosing clan names from the series as well.
Deciding that adopting the name Blackadder seemed a bit presumptious, Dave decided on Baldric. Paul selected Flasheart and the concept of a relaxed clan, with no desire to take part in leagues or ladders, took off.
Meanwhile, Dave setup a server on his machine (Baldric's Bash) and this became their haven away from the more immature members of the gaming community, where they spent many an afternoon and evening battling the bots.

They started advertising for members on the boards of the Battlefield1942.co.uk forums in the middle of November, immediately coming under fire by the head of the Intruderz clan who said that the concept would never work as nobody would want to join a clan not involved in leagues and ladders.
Then suddenly, two other players that Dave had encountered on the EAUK servers called SteelBeans (Capt. Darling) and T@rty (Lord Percy) wanted to join. Both were busy with their own games and wanted something they could be part of without having demands on their time.
Soon afterwards, a third member was added. This was FanDancer (Proudfoot-Smith). Both Paul and Dave had been impressed with his strategy, gameplay and tactics guides so they approached him. He settled in very well with the group ethos and as he didn't have the commitments of the other members, they asked him to join them as Clan Leader, which he did.

Next to join was Mark (Private Bob). He contacted Dave expressing interest and was selected because he was bright and funny. He also displayed a maturity that some older players lack, resulting in his actual age not becoming known until just before the first Big Scrum. Dave suspects Mark was pleasantly surprised when nobody seemed to care that he was considerably younger than anyone else in the clan.

Soon after this, Charlie (Lt.George) joined and immediately became an integral part of the clan.
As all this was happening, a chap named Quercus appeared on the forums and displaying many of the qualities and thoughts of the existing members, was soon snapped up. Although tempted by the name Blackadder, Quercus also thought it was presumptuous to choose it, so tried Private Bob (already gone) and then Lt George (also just gone). In the end FanDancer encouraged Quercus to go for the old Slackbladder himself and this was what he did.
Turning up on The Bash for his first game with Flasheart and Baldric, Blackadder was promptly shot dead by Flasheart (who had recently suffered a series of tank thefts by the AI bots and thought Blackadder "was looking awfully botty...")

As November drew to a close, the Co-Leaders of the clan decided they wanted to give something back to the battlefield1942.co.uk forum community, so making use of Sgt. Bigglesworth's generous offer of a server, organised The Big Scrum. Taking place at the very end of November 2002 it pitted the Hussars and other assorted forum regulars (such as ::3 Para::) against other clans on the forums (JTR, Homeguard, etc). This was the first time the clan had fought together against an organised opposition and it showed that everyone worked well together, without getting too serious.
In Baldric's own words:
"We all wanted to do the best we could- not for stats or a Win- but we wanted to do well for EACH OTHER, to not let the others down. I think it also showed us the game's true potential."
One thing also became apparent, that such games would be better if the Hussars could field an entire side (of 16) by themselves. Therefore the Leaders started another recruiting drive. Making Lt. George and Blackadder the recruiting officers, they drafted some new recruitment posts and set to work getting extra members.
One of these was Deadmeat (Mr. Miggins), who having had so much fun playing with the Hussars, asked to join whilst maintaining his links to his Dunom Mortis clan. Thanks to the Hussars relaxed attitude to clan affiliation, he was accepted and since he had been around before the clan existed, he was treated as one of the original members.
Another person to join soon after that was Numbnutz (Ploppy), who organised a basic but highly useful forum for the clan, so tactics could be discussed for the next "Big Scrum II" in private.

Deciding that the clan could do with a website, Blackadder went about creating one and with a Melchett poster provided by FanDancer, put the site online in the beginning of December 2002. With the list of members and the rapidly growing ranks of the Hussars, it was decided to (reluctantly) introduce a formal but simple structure to the clan - the Co-Leaders were called the "Top Brass", anyone with special duties would be "Regimental Officers" and everyone else would be Officers (or Junior Officers if they were recent recruits). The structure would however be mostly for administration purposes and would remain largely irrelevent for actual games.
In December, Rebecca (Tipplewick) joined the ranks and towards the end of the month (just before the Big Scrum II), Blackadder was "promoted" to the upper ranks along with Baldric, Flasheart and Proudfoot-Smith, partially in recognistion for his website (and other) work and partially because he fitted in so well.
It was shortly after this that the owner of the Battlefield1942.co.uk forums (Munro) offered to create a private clan forum for the 1st Hussars, which they gratefully accepted. In honour of this, they made Munro an honorary Hussar.

Since then, the Hussars have continued to grow, with their initial dream of having 16 members being completely surpassed. Through the recruitment drive they subsequently added Oxider (Speckled Jim), Agrajag (Von Richthoven), Bunn (3-fingered Pete), Urz (Perkins), Major Plonker (Evil Prince Ludwig), Jerry (Sir Wilfred Death) and Violent Jay (Mad McAdder). Added to these were friends and relatives of existing members, such as Wally (Robinson), Bradyn (Cadet Edmund) and Joanne (Nurse Mary). So successful were they that soon they had to close the recruiting office and direct further enquiries to other clans within the community. The Hussars is also unusual in that not only does it sometimes feel like an extended family, but that with various brothers, wives and children in the clan, in a lot of cases it actually is a family!
The clan (again in Baldric's words), "was becoming almost a comfortable fit- like the nice local pub where you and your mates could go after work and sip on a pint, tell stories, play darts etc." 

2003: Troubled Waters By about February 2003 some members were venturing off into other games apart from Battlefield, including IL-2, Medal of Honour and some into the MMORPG game Jumpgate. At the end of March Munro announced he would be leaving the battlefield1942.co.uk forums to helm a new forum dedicated to Half-Life 2 (expected that Summer - and indeed the following two Summers!) so handed control over to two members of the MPG clan, Pagan and Plague.
Also at around this time discussions were being held within the Top Brass about where the clan was going now that interest in BF1942 had waned for some members. Baldric and Flasheart had been expecting this and were aware that clans generally either had to expand out to encompass other games or implode as members split off. They had envisaged a broader gaming group that catered for many different games and so together with Blackadder and Proudfoot-Smith they thrashed out the concept that was to become the Hussars Gaming Group (HGG). They also started looking at hosting their own forums because it was felt that it would be unfair to use a dedicated BF1942 forum for other games.
Therefore the "backup forums" (hosted by Lycos and set up by Lt. George) were used more actively, especially for other games. In the meantime, Ploppy (aka HSeldon) had been organising community members playing the Desert Combat mod for BF1942 into a large community "team", under the [CoUk] tag. Many members of the Hussars signed up to this.

In mid-May, some clan members noticed that others within the co.uk community were seen browsing our private forums. The new owners were contacted but in the interim due to concerns with privacy, all existing threads in the private forum were deleted. Days passed with no response from the owners, much to the frustration of Baldric, so it was eventually decided that we would leave the battlefield1942.co.uk forums and exclusively use our backup forums until something more suitable could be found.
Perkins had set up a forum for the Freelancer game and offered to search around the various hosting companies to find something that would act as both the new HGG site and the new home for the 1st Hussars.
Eventually one was found and Blackadder designed the new web site while Perkins created the forums.

There was some ill-feeling left towards Pagan and Plague and this would be increased later in the year (July) when Pagan and his forum moderators (mostly from MPG) started clamping down on the casual banter within the forums, obeying the strict letter of the law but not the spirit. Some older members of the community started reacting against this and found themselves being banned or their accounts being deleted. Pagan announced that he didn't care what people thought because they were his forums. Things quickly got out of hand and many of the older members of the community were expelled, finding themselves without a home. Some joined individual clan forums (such as XDC) and many joined the HGG forums. Ploppy wished to establish a new home similar to the old forums so together with Bigglesworth and King Dave, later founded the multiplayers.co.uk site as a new home for [CoUk].
The old community started reassembling itself.
Bunn started renting a BF server from game.net on the clan's behalf and this proved so popular that even after game.net stopped renting servers at the beginning of 2004 another host was found, ensuring that Hussars could enjoy a game free from idiots.
It was also this year that we expanded our ranks further, with the likes of nub (Doc Leech), TNT Toulouse (Speekingleesh), Captain Rum, Bum Fluff, Snowcow, Santiago (Dougie Haig), the__t (Lord Smedley), Chris (Strangely Brown), OldPhart (The_Bishop) and later Havoc (Geoffrey Piddle), Zza1pqx (Witchsmeller Persuivant) Grunteh (Bernard), Smoke (Keanrick) Titch, Cplusplos (Talbot Buxomly) and Dot Cotton (Jack Large)

2004: An Uncertain Future
Although many of the old members were either rarely playing or playing other games, a core were still playing (and enjoying) Battlefield and similar games. With the introduction of Battlefield Vietnam interest was rekindled in some ways but game limitations and balance issues put some people off. The Point of Existence mod helped but by the end of the year this had pretty much been dropped, either in favour of older games such as Battlefield 1942, Ghost Recon and Operation Flashpoint or the newer shinier games such as Far Cry or Joint Operations. Baldric decided to leave HGG in April to set up a forum dedicated to MMORPGs, which became SilverFall Gaming (SfG).

As the year progressed the Hussars saw more members drifting off into the ether, either due to real life issues or the influence of new games, especially primarily single-player ones (such as X2, Rome: Total War, Far Cry and the much delayed Half-Life 2) or MMORPGs such as Star Wars Galaxies or World of Warcraft (which appeared at the end of the year).
The common game being played by the end of the year was Joint Operations (with the odd daliance into Star Wars Battlefront). The popular Freelancer game still made the occasional appearance although interest was short-lived without any significant mods appearing to extent the life of the game. In general the end of the year was one in which only a handful of Hussars could be found regularly playing together.
New members added over the course of the year included Turks Meister (Sean The Irish Bastard), Leonardo Acropolis, Prince Harry, Von Gerhardt, Blackcat (Friar Bellows), Dropkick Murphy (Mr Floppy), Seedubs (Mad Gerald), Beggers (Badger) and BillySpaceKid (Glastonbury).

2005: New Beginnings?
The march of the MMORPG continues unabated and continues to claim Hussar members. The current favourite is World of Warcraft (WoW), which has snagged many of our numbers. Call of Duty has seen another surge of interest. At the beginning of the year the opportunity arose to once again have a Battlefield server, this time in partnership with a Counterstrike clan managed by one of Blackadder's work colleagues (Silva of the GHF clan). This server is a dedicated machine from which GHF run Counterstrike servers and we run a BF (or occasionally CoD) server. The plans to convert this to a Battlefield 2 server hit an unexpected obstacle due to the ranking system introduced by EA, where in-game rewards were limited to official servers, so unranked ones became ghost towns. Another long-standing BF clan (Team Friction) appears to have succumbed to the pressures of maintaining focus in an ever-changing online world, but not before we added Human_Shield (Ivor Biggun) to our ranks from theirs.
As the year progressed, the hope of rekindling interest with Battlefield 2 appears to have had some fruition - many people have come back to play it and been won over by the gameplay (as well as the promise of the new Forgotten Hope 2 mod that will use the BF2 engine) and even Baldric has been tempted back from the fantasy worlds in time for the third birthday of the clan.
As the year draws to a close, we are looking forwards to more exciting games (X3, Call of Duty 2 and the first BF2 expansion; Special Forces) and an online presence that is unlikely to fade away.
Indeed despite the disappearance of some members, we have continued to add more to our ranks, including some old faces from the CoUk forums such as Toobs (McAngus), Voo (King Penguin), Dingo69 and Ghostwraith (McNoLegs), as well as a member of the SfG forums; Hurlshot and what I suspect will not be the last of the extended clan related to Private Bob, Aje15 (Hardwood). 

2006: Still Spamming
As the clan moved into 2006, more new games were jostling for people's time including the racing game GT Legends, Pacific Fighters (again), Call of Duty 2, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
A few more members have headed in the direction of Azeroth but a good core are currently still playing Battlefield 2 and Call of Duty 2. A few more members have been added to the ranks, such as Dodge and Jestah and including another two relatives of Private Bob (as predicted) under the name of Batesy91 (Gubber) and Bacon.
A surprise hit on the gaming front is Relic's fantastic RTS game Company of Heroes.

As the year progressed towards the frankly astonishing fourth birthday, Blackadder and Flasheart decided to bolster their numbers after FanDancer's prolongued absence by promoting fine young(?) and longstanding members of the clan into the Top Brass; those two being Miggins and Agrajag. As we hit November the Hussars are looking forward to starting the next GTL racing cup (HCC2), as well as the appearance of such games as Total War Medieval 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2 and even the "not bad" Battlefield 2142.


2007: From Strength to Strength
Another year, another deluge of games and still more ways to kill ourselves (online) in stupid ways.
Yet another resurgence of Freelancer (the game that will not die) was assisted by the huge Frontierspace mod. GTR2 has also claimed some racers although with HCC2 starting and seeing a large number of people playing GTL (even Baldric, Nurse mary and Edmund joined the starting grid). Company of Heroes is still going strong as is Call of Duty 2 and Pacific Fighters (while we wait for the Battle of Britain game). GRAW has given way to the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas and Armed Assault has appeared as a possible successor to the Battlefield series as far as the Hussars are concerned. We have even coaxed in a new member in the form of Critical Bill, a long standing fan of OFP and now Armed Assault. Towards the end of the year Call of Duty went all modern, dropping the WW2 era in favour of modern-day conflicts. Luckily CoD: Modern Warfare turned out to be a fantastic game.


2008: Camping it up
The third HCC cup continued to draw people into the GTR2 racing game, with some lasting longer than others. This year also saw the first big influx of non-Hussars into the HCC events, with many from 7DR and some from XDC also joining in. Indeed it led to one of their number (Gonzo) offering their rackage server to host the events.
Company of Heroes was still going strong as was CoD4 - a game that even tempted the HEF (Hussars Expeditionary Force) out of retirement to take part in the Genocide friendly tournament run by TWB and helped add Almar to our ranks. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 appeared on the scene, looking very similar to its predecessor.Zombie co-op became all the rage with Valve's Left 4 Dead and later on the release of Call of Duty World At War, which also had a zombie mode.
Along with some unfortunate job losses for some of the clan, Autumn saw a camping trip to Duxford with a number of Hussars and soon-to-be-Hussars taking part, including Miggins, Blackadder, Toobs and Agrajag (both kindly coming over from Sweden), Rum, Ivor Biggun, Sly-Fox and DamnnBlast. 

2009: A Year of Shocks and Sadness
2009 started very badly with not one but two drivers in the HCC racing series dying unexpectedly and prematurely. XDC's Col. Mugworth died in January and Pufferfutz died in March. Both would be missed. HCC4 was dedicated to their memory as a result.
Company of Heroes still struggled on, with a campaign introduced by Blackadder bubbling along throughout the year. Call of Duty World At War gained pace, although CoD4 was still played and indeed HEF took part in a second Genoicde tournament, doing very well but ending on a sour note after some appalling camping. The much awaited (by some) ArmA2 appeared and proved to be just as buggy as expected. Later on OFP:Dragon Rising appeared and was a much more polished game, but far more limited. It also suffred from using client-hosting for the multiplayer, something that would come back to haunt PC players when CoD: Modern Warfare 2 was released later in the year.
Another Hussars meeting took place, with Ploppy coming over to meet up with Miggins, Rum, Smoke and DamnnBlast - the latter injuring himself badly while playing football.
Left 4 Dead 2 was released amid some controversy (being very close behind the original game's release) but this would be overshadowed completely by IW's shock announcement in the autumn that CoD 6 aka (Modern Warfare 2) would not have any dedicated servers, custom maps or mod support, instead depending upon client-hosting and match-making (as the console versions had). In fact preactically all the PC-specific features were removed from it, causing uproar in the PC community.
Empire: Total War also finally appeared and long time friend and Foundation colleague of Ploppy (none other than Pi-Oh-Pah) finally joined the Hussars. Hussars also took to the skies again with Rise of Flight, but poor performance and shoddy game mechanics caused most of them to look elsewhere for entertainment.

2010: A return to the Battlefield
2010 with the latest HCC competition switching to Race07 (another SimBin engine) and the touring cars, following on from some successful testing the previous year.
In February Aliens Vs Predator was released and although fun in places, it seemed to be another game ruined by the dependence upon client-hosting.
In March came the much-awaited Battlefield Bad Company 2, a smaller, more action-oriented version of the Battlefield franchise that in the wake of the MW2 debacle promised much to PC gamers. It didn't quite deliver (dedicated server files not being released to the public, master servers and back-end not up to the game demands and lots of bugs), but it still not only felt like Battlefield but also introduced the incredible Destruction 2.0 engine and fantastic game sounds, sufficiently to draw a great many Hussars (and others within 7DR and XDC) back into it. Later the BC2 Vietnam expansion offered an incredibly varied experience and very different feel to the basic game, one that was only let down by the chokepoint style of the maps. In the summer, some of the Hussars travelled down to Ledbury near Gloucester, joined by McAngus and Ploppy from overseas for a meet. Towards the end of the year the next Call of Duty game arrived (Black Ops) which attracted the attention of some Hussars, but fewer than those who had played BC2. Sadly the HCC 6 racing championship fell by the wayside due to declining numbers and a falling out between some of the Hussars and members of another racing community. However two of the regular racers also joined the Hussars clan, in the form of Skipy (Sticky) and Dr. Duck.
2010 also saw one of the top Brass, in the shapely form of Miggins, finally tie the knot with his long-standing (suffering?) other half.

2011: "Hello, Old Friend"
2011 started with the Hussars spread widely amongst a series of games, from Race 07 and Race 0n, to Rise of Flight, Bad Company 2 and CoD Black Ops, with occasional ventures into FIFA on the XBox, Company of Heroes and Bloodbowl, as well as single player games such as Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2 and Arkham Asylum. The first half of 2011 saw a spate of near misses - games that could have been great but were either badly flawed or just not interesting enough to get the Hussars playing them. These included Bulletstorm (great single player though), Homefront, Red Orchestra 2, IL-2 Cliffs of Dover, Brink and the very underwhelming Duke Nukem Forever.
The gems in the mud were the fantastic Portal 2 and the hilarious Magicka. In the summer, the traditional gathering took place, albeit with smaller numbers and this time in Llanidloes in Wales. It was here that Sly-Fox announced he was soon to be heading off to Australia although luckily the magic of the internet allows him to keep in contact.
HCC also saw a resurgence as the keen racers among us got together for a new flexible series of events called the HCC Sprint World Tour, trying different cars on different tracks.
The summer also saw a startling number of Hussars revealing their fondness for Warkhammer 40K with the arrival of the game Space Marine, while some took to the skies playing the helicopter combat sim DCS Blackshark.
As Autumn drew in, the Battlefield 3 beta and eventual release drew a lot of attention from the Hussars. So much so that the likes of Baldric game it a try and other inactive Hussars started gaming again, such as Flasheart, Dingo, Snowcow, Doc Leech and Lord Smedley. ,br> Call of Duty: modern Warfare 3 also got released, but saw little interest from us.
The end of the year saw Battlefield 3 still going strong, although some had drifted into the excellent the newly released Skyrim and the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.

2012: Something Amusing
Good lord, T@rty? and McAdder? Here?