Where have you gone, Errol Flynn?
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The Gunship Battle is one of the most interesting and fun encounters we've seen in WoW, and hearkens back to the days of swashbuckling epics. The premise behind this encounter is the raid team boarding the Skybreaker (which we all know as a base of operations in Icecrown), and heading out to the upper reaches of the Citadel. Unfortunately, it's not all smooth sailing, as the Horde makes an attempt at ruining our cruise.
The Gunship Battle combines vehicle/device combat (the Skybreaker's cannons, which must be used to damage the hull of the Horde ship) with heavy raid movement (Rocket Packs - could anything be cooler than that???) between the ships. The raid must board the Horde vessel numerous times during the encounter in order to kill an enemy mage, whose appearance causes the cannons to be inoperable while he's alive. Once he's dead, the boarding team must use their rocket packs to jump back to the Skybreaker, all the while the defending party is gathering adds that spawn on the Skybreaker. This pattern is repeated a number of times, ending in the eventual defeat and retreat of the Horde ship.
This is a pretty trivial encounter from a raid perspective; the toughest challenge has been to ensure that all the members of our boarding party are actually back on the Skybreaker before sending the Horde ship packing. Not that I'm pointing fingers...
Thanks Blizzard for a lighthearted and lore appropriate encounter that provides an excellent segue to subsequent battles.