Actual Content

When we started The Ladder last month I had to make a first ladder to base from and I made the decision to do so by skillpoints. So the higher a persons skillpoints the lower he/she would end up on the ladder. Of course this has also meant that I ended up at the bottom spot. But then all the other directors ended up down there with me, so this was starting interesting. My first fight was against my second in command Von Diel with him bringing a nano fitted Hurricane, but I had managed a surprise. See I don’t have any t2 medium gun skills other then lasers and Von knew this. Thus the nano Hurricane was a good counter which would allow him to slowly chip away against my harbingers buffer as he would be able to dictate range. However I also knew Von would be expecting this, so enter the dual rep Myrmidon which featured small autocannons and a neut in the highs.

So this started as von expected with him at range and able to dictate it, I was however tanking his damage output on one repper and cap stable no less. We traded light drones for a while with me not wanting to lose my medium drones just yet, since they represented the main bulk of my dps. After Vons internet connection decided to do what Vons internet connection usually does and disconnect a couple of times we came back together to finish this off. I must applaud Von at this point though as he saw this was heading to a draw and did not hesitate to then go balls deep. He set orbit to close range and tried to break me with overwhelming dps before I broke his shield buffer. But alas this meant that I had him webbed, scrammed and neuted and was pouring my drones over him so the cane cracked and made a pretty explosion.

The next fight was against a member in t1 frigs but ended within several seconds as my shield Rifter made for a perfect counter against his armor rep Rifter. My third fight was one of the best fights I’ve had in a long time and put me up against corp member Shasz in assault frigates. I did my research and saw that the only af he had ever flown was the ishkur, but I also knew Shasz would think more ahead. I had overheard him a few weeks earlier telling that he was crosstraining for minmatar so that was what I was expecting. I went for an active tank ishkur with a neut and cap booster. But as always I had a trick up my sleeve, an active explosive hardner to patch not only the hole but also to counter the most likely damage type I was about to face. He had gone for a jaguar and we started out with him kiting me, but he was still in neut range. His dps was more than my tank could manage though even with the active hardner and his nos was keeping the immediate effects of my neut off. So I had to get creative and used my drones as distraction. I had 4 spares and I started using them as a shield as he focused on them instead of me. This gave me enough time for the neut to do its work and overcome his nos, shutting down his shield booster and allowing my blasters and remaining drones to dig in. The total fight lasted about 10 minutes, which is long for a frig fight in my opinion at least. Good fun fight and it kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire time.

Now to move on from The Ladder fights which, while great fun, are not true fights and move on to some actual pewpew. Enter Kaal Redrum. I hope to get him writing on here as well at some point but in the mean time he is know within our corp under the title the Master Baiter and for good reason. True to form he logs in and finds a fleet Stabber and a Vagabond in a neighboring system. We scramble to form up while he baits them in a belt. I was in my Curse and ready on the gate while Von was still scrambling to get a ship together. After only a few seconds they went for Kaals Cyclone and in jumped my Curse. As I landed I put neuts on both ships and drones on the fleet stabber which was called primary as it was within scram range of Kaal. In the mean time Kaal was getting hammered by both ships, which put out a very decent amount of damage. There is one very nice advantage from having a Curse around though, the enemy ships rarely have enough cap to keep a scram running and so Kaal got his ship out in deep structure. But now I was alone with a  Vaga and a fleet stabber, the only thing that kept me alive here was that they no longer had the cap to run there mwd’s and I managed to keep dodging them while keeping point on the fleet stabber. Then like a miracle, Vons Ishkur lands and scrams the Stabber.

Not a moment too soon either because the vaga and stabber had dropped light ecm drones on me and they had just got a jam off. My drones with Vons added damage was finally too much for the stabber and it went boom. The jam ran out and I proceeded to neut the shit out of the Vaga in an attempt to make it drop its point which succeeded, but not soon enough. Vons Ishkur succumbed to the damage while aligning for warp. Me alone with the Vaga it now stood no chance I was out of range of its main bulk of dps and no cap left to run its mwd. It made a pretty explosion just as a repaired Kaal landed his Cyclone again.

With that I will end my wall of text but at least I have stuff to say and now there is actually something remotely worth reading on here. So let’s hope people actually read this and never forget: This can only end well!