Gank night

Last Saturday me and Lex joined a SHC Gank Fleet for some fun. These fleets are run every once in a while and are organized by the Scrapheap Challenge eve forums. It basically is a bunch of people from all walks of EVE coming together for a suicide fleet through 0.0. Every fleet also has a theme as to what ships you must bring. This one’s theme was rockets, in honor of their new buff in the latest patch. So everyone was sporting Maledictions, Vengeances, Hawks and Breachers. We gathered our 30 odd man fleet in Otsasai and started out with making a giant conga line while we waited for everyone to get ready. Then a flashy Cerberus warps to our station about 100k off and cloaks. He probably failed to notice that we had about 10 Maledictions in our conga line, so burn for him we did and low and behold. Decloaked, tackled and dead within 10 seconds. Now that’s a good way to start a roam.

We headed out and as soon as we jumped into our entry point of M-0 we found a camp to smash. Caught in their own bubbles and by insta locking interceptors a Crow, an Ares and an Arazu quickly met there end. We had only moved 2 jumps at this point so things were looking good. We headed it out to a station system further down the pipe. This was mostly uneventfull beyond the random travelers we caught. That stopped when we hit the station system. Suicidal as we were we set up on station and proceeded to shoot whatever undocked. We waited for a bit and sure enough an idiot in a Maller aggressed, so naturally he died. The next one was smarter with a smartbombing Armageddon. However rockets do have nice damage at range so we stayed out of 5k and nuked him. Thinking that was all we would get, we moved off to the outgate when a straggler called that a Hurricancane had aggressed him. So naturally we all hurried back to help murder it. Turns out there was a whole pack, so we murdered the other 2 Hurricanes as well as a bomber that was foolish enough to decloak. Now having pretty much cleared this system of any fighting spirit, we moved on to more fertile shooting grounds. We picked another Hurricane, Deimos and Purifier kill up on the way, before we hit our next destination.

12YA-2, now that was a fun system. We barged in, warping straight to station again, put up some bubbles and waited. Not 10 seconds later a Hulk warps in! We could not believe our luck, so we set to work at destroying it asap. But wait there is more. Not two seconds after we killed the first Hulk a second one warps in! Points get called and rockets fly as the second one makes a pretty explosion too. Everything else quickly safes up after this hilarity, so we move on again. We repeated the exact same trick in the next system. Jump in, put bubbles on the station and wait. Sure enough a Tempest warps in. he had apparently been ratting or plexing or something, because he already had mayor armor damage. We light it up and as were killing a Drake warps in to the bubble from a different angle. Interceptors start burning and call point, he’s not going anywhere either. We murder the Tempest and move on to the plucky Drake, who takes a bit longer to take out. But eventually he also succumbs to our mighty rocket fleet.

Wondering why we haven’t been slaughtered by a massive Northern Coalition gang yet, we move on again. In P-2 we run into a Drake  so we proceed to attack as usual, but here is where things get weird. For the next 5 minutes Drakes keep warping in consecutively and succumbing to our wondrous rocket fleet. Until finally after four hours of roaming a 50 man TEST fleet shows up to end our wonderful ramble through the north. Both me and Lex bite the dust and pod ourselves home. So remember: This can only end well! And in this case it actually did.

Amamake Rage

As our killboard quite clearly shows we have been on vacation for the past week. Leaving our normal base of operations in Brin for the insane twirl of pvp that only Amamake can provide. As part of our Rifter program I moved 50 Rifters including fittings at the cost of the corp over to our new office in Amamake and we had the fun commence. I wish to add here that I even won a bet with Von on if my cyno alt would survive. See I moved the Rifters in with my Jump Freighter and of course I did this in peak EU timezone. Lighting the cyno with my alt in a normal Heron frigate, to all our surprise I actually lived out the full 10 minutes until the cyno ran out. No one even came to gank it!

Anyways back to the much more interesting explosions. Our vacation week starts out great, after I go off for dinner. I had literally logged of for 10 minutes, when sure enough, the guys probe down an help kill a Rattlesnake. Seriously a Rattlesnake, in Amamake and it was missioning. Granted the fit wasn’t the greatest, but still. After I came back from dinner, and yelled on comms because I just missed that, we continued on with our killing spree, killing frigates and destroyers in quick succession. We thought we bagged something nice when we caught a Vagabond and swarmed him with our 3 Rifters. Then a hostile rapier decloaks, but we quickly surmise that he is neutral to both parties. So we shout in local at him to help kill the Vagabond, as that is a much tastier targets then a bunch of Rifters. The Vagabond enters structure and we warp off, not wanting to lose our ships to the rapier and thinking the Rapier will easily finish it off anyway. However hilarity ensues when low and behold the Vagabond warps off in structure as the Rapier had no pointed it. In all honesty we should have just traded the Rifters for the Vagabond, but damn that Rapier failed. So smack ensued in local, while we hatched a plan to now murder that Rapier. After all that would be justice, right?

Getting another friendly aboard we set our plan in motion. The entirety of the plan consisted of springing there trap and then swarming the Rapier in hopes that it died before we did. Sure enough they sprung there trap and engaged our lonesome Rifter in top belt, so we went for it. We got point on the Rapier as their support warped in. They now had one Rapier, one Fleet Issue Stabber, one Taranis and one Thrasher against our three Rifters and one Taranis. However we had the upper hand as our friendly decloaked his Falcon and presumed to jam the stuffings out of any hostiles on the field. We quickly burned the Taranis to prevent it from eating up our Rifters and continued munching on the Rapier. It went boom shortly after. The Thrasher was next as the Fleet Stabber had quickly moved away and was now well out of range. He was no match for our mighty Rifter army and we got our last pretty explosion of that battle. They smacked more in local, we laughed on comms and thanked our friendly neighborhood Falcon as we parted ways.

The following days we got many more kills and much hilarity, as the poor T1 Rifters killed T2 and faction hulls. Mostly interceptors but some unfortunates like this Dramiel and another Vagabond. Even one on one some didn’t stand a chance, lie this poor Navy Slicer that Von caught. In the end our total rampage ended like this. 105 kills against 61 losses, 59 of our losses were T1 frigates. One particular highlight I still think are the 19 Interceptor kills, which just proves that T2 doesn’t always beat T1. This ends our lovely vacation in Amamake, though I have left the Rifters there. You never know when we might go back after all. Now we’re back to our normal routine of engaging SCUM. and ridding the universe of anything that looks like a mission ship. I look forward to our future kills and as always: This can only end well!