:]v[:      About Us      :]v[:

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The Harmattan Vanguard Clan was founded on October 14th, 2007 by Assassin. Assassin had just left the Harmattan Brigade, to found a sister Clan, Harmattan Vanguard. Assassin took everything he liked about the Big :]-[:, and expanded on it to create Harmattan Vanguard. Although originally designed to run alonside the former clan, on October 19th, 2007; the Harmattan Brigade officially disbanded after being an active competitor of the Battlefield series through BF1942, BF-Vietnam, and BF2. The spirit of the Big :]-[: lives on within Assassin and Phantom, both previous admins of the Harmattan Brigade.

The name Harmattan Vanguard was chosen for a reason. Assassin wanted to take the ideals of Harmattan one step further, to advance upon them. The first part of the name, Harmattan, shows where Assassin came from... The starting point. The second part of the name, Vanguard, shows the direction he plans to take his fellow Clan-mates... To the forefront of the Anti-Cheat community. Where-as the Harmattan Brigade was known for its fair play and skill, Harmattan Vanguard would become known within the fore-front of the Anti-Cheat Community. The Clan tag is a combination of the stylized H (first letter of Harmattan) modified to show the first letter of Vanguard. And thus, :]v[: was chosen as the Clan's tag. Where as the Harmattan is the unstoppable storm raging across the African desert, the Harmattan Vanguard is the front of that storm, charging forward to lead the way through the example we set.

The Harmattan Vanguard is a gaming Clan of the traditional sense. It has one leader, the sole founder, Assassin. Responsibilities for administering and maintaining the Clan and its servers are spread to Clan Admin, though the founder retains the abilitiy to veto any application, vote, rule, or policy of Vanguard. This ensures that the Clan will always stays true to its founder's original intent.

A stricter-than-most Code of Conduct was devised to prevent any uncertainty on what behavior is or is not allowed. Harmattan Vanguard members are held to a higher standard than members of most other Clans. Each is expected to be a shining example of fairplay. Unlike most Clans that accept all who apply, each applicant to Harmattan Vanguard will be screened to make sure that they are able (and willing) to follow the Code of Conduct, and will conduct themselves with maturity in-game, in our websites and servers, and in the exercise of any admin abilities. Votes by the Clan members help determine which applicants or recruits are accepted into the Clan, as well as how to spend Clan funds, and which games to run on Clan servers. There is also a mechanism for which Clan members can vote to remove a disruptive member from the Clan.

A 30/60/90 day rule is in effect for Clan membership, in which inactive members will lose membership if they are away too long without at least some contact. Unlike many Clans that have large membership rosters, but only a few active players, Harmattan Vanguard's roster will be made up of people who are active within the Clan.

There are no mandatory practices in Harmattan Vanguard, and donations are made on a voluntary basis to maintain and expand the servers and services offered to our members. No one will ever profit from any donations made to our Clan.

Harmattan Vanguard encourages the general public to join us in our Ventrilo server and Forums, we ask only that you respect our members and each other. All :]v[: members have admin rights to Ventrilo, moderator rights to the public Forums, and will enforce Clan standards of behavior at all times.

:]v[: is always looking to recruit mature gamers for BF3, please visit our recruitment page for additional information; and thank you for visiting the Harmattan Vanguard Clan!

Clan Duties

Clan Founder:	:]v[: Assassin
Clan Admins:	:]v[: Assassin :]v[: Tokarski :]v[: Turk
PunksBusted Streaming Admins:	:]v[: Assassin
PBBans Streaming Admins:	:]v[: Assassin
Game Server Admins (donors):	:]v[: Assassin :]v[: Tokarski :]v[: Turk
BF3 Recruiter:

In December of 2007, :]v[: added a ranked CoD4 Server that streams to PunksBusted and PbBans. With that, the Clan officially joined the PunksBusted Anti-Cheat Community, and picked up our first recruit (StReB!E). We continued to add new pages to the website's Recruit and Member-Only areas, and within 2 weeks our game server was ranked in the 76th percentile of CoD4 game servers. In January '08, we registered our tags with EvenBalance.

In March 2008, :]v[: switched the CoD4 Game Server over to custom maps. 25 custom maps were then added to the server, and the process began of picking which ones are to become part of the permanent rotation. The custom maps were added in a 'custom' mod, that runs off the games default config files as opposed to all other mods that run off of a tertiary set of configs. [Thanks gain to =US= Caveman for showing us how to do this.] :]v[: Assassin then began sharing those instructions with other clans who wanted the ability to run custom maps without having to install full mods, response has been almost overwhelming. In the first two days, we received over 30 requests for these instructions.

In April 2008, :]v[: Turk joined Harmattan Vanguard, and in June we suckered :]v[: MavR1ck in as well. July saw the reverting of our private custom map server to a public (vanilla) server, and the server quickly filled. Its popularity continues to grow, and in August we broke into the 90th percentile. :]v[: Tuor joined our ranks at the end of September, and we switched to a new game server in an effort to reduce lag.

In October 2008, we began subscribing to the cheat related ban lists of AON, GGC, and RA in addition to PunksBusted and PBBans; and soon added :]v[: DeathWish to our ranks. In November, our gameserver began streaming to BustedPunks (whitelight project) to continue our anti-cheat efforts.

As 2008 draws closed, :]v[: has seen its membership double in the past year without a single member leaving the Clan, and we have three promising recruits. To improve the quality of our gameserver, we changed game server providers, and noticed an immediate improvement.

January 2009 saw the additions of :]v[: Niwa and :]v[: Steinmann to the Clan, and :]v[: Turk was promoted to Clan Admin.

:]v[: Sublime joined the Clan in April '09, and we returned to running custom maps on our gameserver.

May and June '09 saw a few members leave the clan and the gameserver was returned to running stock maps. Excitement built regarding the upcoming release of CoD:MW 2, but after the Infinity Ward CoD:MW2 debaucle, the Clan began preparations for BF:BC2. A Ranked server was reserved on 2-11-2010.

The BF:BC2 server has been up and running since the game released, and the Clan now prepares for the much anticipated release of BF3 with a new website and forums in Sept '11.