Michael Deering's January 2014 challenge is called Mission Impossible, and the goal is to capture a stronghold and make it your home. It's a team game on the GopherCraft server, hardcore mode in Minecraft 1.7.4, with four rules: no mods, no beds, no killing passive mobs and nothing off camera. Basket's team is MaBaSteeLo. lostinthefort, Steel_Douglas and Max_Writer join in the chat in the first half minute, and BasketMC makes four.
Snow, ice and no meat
The world starts in snow, with a field of ice spikes on the horizon and a frozen pond nearby. Steel_Douglas turns up wearing a Santa suit. With passive mobs off limits, food has to come from plants, so the first job is trees: "We'll try and get saplings and build a 2x2." Basket grabs some sand by the water, punches down a spruce and earns Taking Inventory. Then the hoe question: "Does anybody have a hoe made yet?" Nobody does.
Down Basket's hole
Basket digs straight down beside the pond with a wooden pickaxe and keeps going, carving a stone staircase into the dark and swapping up to a stone pickaxe. "Where's Basket going in the ground?" someone asks, and gets the answer: "See those two pylons over there? That's kind of marking where the cave's at." Coal comes out of the walls and Basket lights the way with torches. Zombies find the tunnel. "Be careful. Don't die." Basket fights them off with a stone sword and comes away with rotten flesh, about the only meat on the menu.
A field with a roof
Back on the surface near dusk, the team's crop field is taking shape by the water: tilled dirt, a water channel, torches and a crafting table, with dirt blocks built out over the top. Earlier someone had asked whether the water would freeze if it's left open, and the fix was to put a block over it. One of the team's "super saplings" had already grown, and it was chopped for wood right away.
Sundown
The sky goes red and the first night is coming. Max_Writer and lostinthefort are still out on the snow, and talk turns to a mob trap and a ladder that someone put in the wrong place. "We're all gonna die day one, aren't we?" "It's very possible." Basket heads back down with Steel_Douglas and earns Benchmarking for a crafting table.
Things in the tunnels
The tunnels keep filling up. A skeleton goes down ("Have an arrow and a bone"), someone picks up string, and the talk turns to a fishing pole. Then the lag hits. "I can't even open a crafting bench right now." Max_Writer drops off the server and comes back a few seconds later. Another zombie steps out at the end of Basket's tunnel and gets the stone sword too.
Iron by morning
Past the tunnels the team breaks into a wide cave and lights it up. Basket mines iron ore, and the team counts its haul out loud: "One piece of iron. Boo." "I have three. So, we're at four now." There's lava below and water spilling through the cave, and someone points out what they're missing: "We need a bucket." Basket blocks off a water source, and by now lostinthefort has left the game. Then: "It's almost morning," and soon after, "Sun is well up." Basket ends the first day alive and still mining underground, and no death shows on screen. The end card follows, and there's no gameplay after it.