Unfortunately, Dave (Bernkastel) has decided to resign his position as COGS president as he feels he doesn’t have enough time. This means that we need an EGM to elect a new president.

The EGM will be held at COGS LAN 2 (next Saturday 20/11/10) at 12 noon and will hopefully last less than 15 minutes. If you’d like to nominate yourself as a candidate, please post your manifesto in the Serious Business section of the forum or email the committee.

More details can be found in this forum post.

Also, remember to sign up for CL2 by midday this Wednesday (17/11/10) if you need a lift.

In brief:

1. Signup for the next LAN ASAP
2. Get Trackmania here or on Steam (it’s free!)
3. 8pm start
4. Join the only Mongolian server – “COGS Gaming Night”

In long:
If you want a lift to the next LAN, sign up by early next week. We’ll be sorting the lifts out a bit earlier this time than previously, so the sooner you sign up the better!

As for the gaming night, the above list covers pretty much everything; the reason our server is Mongolian is that it’s the easiest way to find it in the server list as it should be the only Mongolian one. Thus: Start TrackMania, click Play Online, click All, find Mongolia in the “World” list in the middle, click on it, and then click “COGS Gaming Night” on the right. It saves a lot of hassle trying to use the friend system which isn’t tied to anything like the steam friends list, and has a max capacity of 16 friends….

For chatting to each other we’ll once again be borrowing the kind SWLans mumble server. Get mumble here if you don’t already have it. The IP is voip.swlans.co.uk, the port is the default one and the password is “swlans”. We’ll be in the Racing channel!

Any issues, instant feedback can be had by going to the IRC chat and saying the names of anyone who has a star by their name. Other people might also be of use….

PS, Day of Defeat:Source is currently only £1.50 on steam if there are any WW2 shooter fans out there.

Defence of the Ancients is an old mod for Warcraft III which is widely renowned as having one of nastiest learning curves around; around a hundred heroes, similar numbers of items and strategies. For that reason the recent article about Valve’s work towards DotA 2 has got me looking forward to more news. I’m optimistic that the proposed changes will actually make DotA 2 a very fun game.
If nothing else it should persuade a few people to take it up so I’ll have people to play with again!

~Wyrm

As many of you are well aware steam has a habit of selling good games at fantastic prices. We are therefore going to try to sieve through the “still expensive” and the “not worth it” to bring you the games worth buying. We’ll keep posting any fantastic deals as we see them, and we’ll try to use them for our online gaming nights(such as this week’s!) whenever possible.

So without further ado:

• Team Fortress 2 £6.99 – Full of updates and the most popular FPS in COGS for the past few years
• Dogfighter £1.05 -a light hearted 3d flight sim
• Overlord 87p – Order your minions to do your bidding for less than a pound. (Single player)
• Bioshock £3.49 – A somewhat creepy and much acclaimed FPS set in an underwater city
• Left 4 Dead and the sequel – L4D2 £6.49 or £7.49 (or £11.49 for both) – The benchmark against which all zombie coop shooters are measured.
• Worms Reloaded £8.99 – A (somewhat buggy) worms game, but there is still no finer series for making you laugh hard and long.
• Borderlands GOTY £29.99 – Not a great deal, but it includes early access to DNF and all 4 DLC expansions. If you ever wanted a FPS version of Diablo with guns, this is about as close as you’ll get!
• The Dawn of War series – Sci fi RTS set in the Warhammer 40K universe. DoW2 has a pretty fun coop campaign.
  • Dawn of War Platinum £4.99 – It’s been a few years, but £5 for a decent RTS with 2 expansions isn’t bad. Doesn’t include:
  • Dawn of War: SoulStorm £4.99 – Complete the set!
  • Dawn of War II complete £19.99 – If you want only the expansion it’s cheaper to get it from Game where it’s part of a 2 for £25 deal, and it’s still through steam anyhow….

There’s enough games there to keep you all amused for a while, and don’t forget to stop by the gaming night poll and vote for your game of choice. And if you have any games you’d like to see played, post and let us know!

11:30 – CS:S Gun Game

14:00 – RTS (Play your favourite strategy game, be it AoE2, Starcraft 2, Warcraft 3 or even SupCom!)

17:00 – Altitude

21:00 – Armagetron

And don’t forget to play plenty of games that aren’t on the timetable!

We will also have  some consoles, a tournament and a minecraft server running all day! If you don’t own a game on the timetable, ask around and someone is bound to have a cheap copy, or just lend you one for the day.

Welcome to COGS ’10-’11!

Here are the events that you’ve been waiting for:

• 14th October: TF2 PC Gaming Night (8pm onwards)
• 19th October: Console night in Bar 100, Student Union – 8pm onwards.
• 23rd October: COGS LAN 1 – Located in the Avon Gorge room in the Student’s union from 10am. Please sign up now!

For all of our current members who are returning – you know where things are; try not to get too much blood on the carpets. For those of you who are just joining, here are some quick pointers:

Firstly – get involved! Whether it’s browsing the forums and explaining in intricate detail why Civilization V is a travesty or simply quoting people wildly out of context, chances are someone else will join you in the comments, so get posting.

Next – get chatting! With an IRC channel that’s in 24 hour use, there’s always something being talked about, agreed upon, and then forgotten. If you’re new to IRC, don’t worry just skim here and then click one of the two prominent links.

Then – get talking! With a mumble server that has channels for anything, most of our members use it for VOIP chat when playing games. The download link for mumble can be found under the Gaming Guide link above, but for you eager people, the server address is server.cogsbristol.co.uk, which is where all our other services are hosted too.

Lastly, and most importantly – get gaming! Log on to IRC, see if people are up for a game, connect to mumble and get going!

Full details of all our events will be on the forums and in the inevitable e-mails that will grace your inboxes very soon. There’s also our handy calendar which we enter all events into as soon as we know about them!

Until the next time, that’s all from your committee this year.

Remember; Don’t play with yourself!

Bernkastel, 2kah, Pretzel, Wyrm, Wildfire, Esvandiary & Tsietisin

Very soon, literally thousands of freshers will be descending upon the Student Union. The chaps who work there thought “we’d better distract them or they might steal the UBU print shop”. And so, in a bid to save their bacon (which is stored in the print shop), the staff at UBU organised a fair for these freshers and imaginatively named it the “Freshers Fair”. In another strike of pure imagination, they decided to do this fair during “Freshers week”, specifically Thursday 7th – Friday 8th. The fair will open at 10am both days and close at 6pm on Thursday and 4pm Friday.

And best of all, COGS will be there. Even better than that, you’re invited! This is your chance to sign up for another year to the society that… did all that cool stuff. For a mere £2, you can be a part of all that cool stuff. Of course you can always sign up after the fair, but we’d prefer you came along anyway. Why? Because we like wearing crocodile hats! And if that doesn’t swing it for you, then maybe this will…

We will be running a tournament \o/ That’s right folks, come to our stall for a chance to win FABULOUS prizes. I would tell you which game we’re playing for the tournament, but I can’t, because I forgot!!!1

Our stall will be located on the 4th floor, opposite LSR4 which some you may know as “that L shaped room, you know, the one we had the last 2 LANs in”. If those aren’t good enough directions for you, then turn right after coming in the front entrance of the Union, go up to the 4th floor, and scream like a baby until one of us comes to get you. Alternatively, you could obtain a map