Roll The Bones catches you right from the start. It has a much heavier use of guitars than before and moves somewhat back to the pre Signals era albeit with a modern production. There are some terrific tracks on here. The opener Dreamline is a favourite as well as the last track You Bet Your Life. This was the first time since I had become a fan of the band that they actually played shows in the UK. So of course I bought tickets to as many shows as I could afford. Which was two! One at Birmingham NEC and the following one at Wembley Arena. For the first show I went with my brother and my best friend. The support band was Primus, not too well known amongst British Rush fans it seemed as they were met with a wall of confusion. We loved Primus, however, and they performed a cracking set, including a marvellous funk rendition of Metallica’s Master Of Puppets with plenty of slap bass. It was hilarious! Then Rush came on. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. My heroes were on stage! And when they played Limelight as their second song I burst into tears. It was all just so overwhelmingly awesome. And then a few days later I got to see them again at Wembley Arena (not to be confused with Wembley Stadium)! What it also did was make me appreciate the albums Presto and Roll The Bones far more than I had.

Dreamline
Bravado
Roll The Bones
Face Up
Where’s My Thing?
The Big Wheel
Heresy
Ghost Of A Chance
Neurotica
You Bet Your Life

Federal Dropship

The Federal Dropship! Ooo, now I’ll admit from what I had already heard about this baby I was not expecting much. But I had to give her a chance. I was pleasantly surprised too. It’s not a half bad ship. It’s by no means the most effective combat vessel out there but its pretty cheap and it’s also hard as nails!

I thought I’d call her the Ghost of a Chance. Mainly because what she lacks in attack she makes up for in defense. She is a really tough ship. I decided to go shieldless and boost her hull beyond belief. She managed to take one hell of a beating before I had to take her back to port for repairs. I also decided to try all burst lasers this time.

Two of the burst lasers are engineered with phase sequence which can damage hull through shields. And the big beam I engineered with kinetic to help damage the hull once the shields had been stripped away. I had quite a lot of success!

Alliance Chieftain

Soooo! Now the ship many of you have been waiting for! The Alliance Chieftain! Firstly, I think the Chieftain is one of the coolest looking ships of all time. Just look at her! Secondly, she moves like a ship half her size. And that’s the problem. I am nowhere near a good enough pilot to adequately test this incredible ship.

I named her the Bravado, seemed the most appropriate from the track names available. And, like the Dropship, I wanted to do something different with the weapons. The greatest Fuel Rat of all time, Ravenov, showed me their Frag Chieftain on Coriolis and I kinda went gaga for it. So I filled all six hardpoints with frag cannons and took a trip to Zachariah Nemo to engineer them.

Now, I’ve said before I utterly suck at combat. The thing with frags is you have to stick close to your opponent in order to do decent damage. With my lack of piloting skill I struggled to do this but when I did land a close shot, all cannons blazing, they did an unbelievable amount of damage.

I’m going to have to come back to this ship. She deserves a lot more time and practice. But for now I really have to concentrate on completing the Rush Fleet.