Wrecking-Brawls-Deep

Who says nothing happens in Eve over the summer?

I’ve mentioned before the main reason I dropped out of Serene Vendetta was the lack of PvP. Or at least the willingness to PvP. The guys kept asking me to organise roams for them but when I did, two guys turn up and only one of those was on time. That’s not to say the leadership weren’t up for it – they were just bad at it.

Rubix>Guys, there’s an Orca on the static. Looks like he’s slightly off the wormhole

Traba>Quick, everyone warp to the static!

Jay> Who’s the pilot?

Rubix> He’s from TLC

Jay> There is no way that is not a trap.

Traba>I don’t care, I want an Orca kill

To be absolutely fair, they did get themselves an orca kill. In exchange for a zealot, two proteus’ an Armageddon, a buzzard and four pods. There are other gems like a reluctance to engage a 6 barge mining fleet in a C4 because it looked like a trap (which I guaranteed them it wasn’t). The gung-ho FC  then ordered everyone to reship to T1 to engage them – just incase. It wasn’t a trap, and some got away.

I had mentioned my lack of pew lamentations and in typical ‘I-told-you-so’ fashion, Ludis did say “well, what did you expect from an ex-Li3 corp?”. I didn’t even know what that meant, but I’m sure it was a brutal putdown to anyone fluent in the machinations of dullsec. Just as I left, they were forming an alliance to, according to Natasha Donnan’s forum post, “We want to be able to form a 40 man t3 fleet and go stomping down the c5 superhighway.” Glad I got out! Been there, done that, then used the t-shirt to wax my car. Can’t win fights? The solution is simple; bring moar guys!

While they were busy assembling WH space’s new blob, I was getting blueballed hard. Monday night and after rounding off some finishing touches to the previous blog entry, comms were alight which battle-chatter. USYSC were heavily engaged with Mordus Angels in a direct null. Logi was going down, so I ship up into a scimitar and join Gibs in his on the K162. Apparently, the guys were at the gate to a complex after scanning down some ratters. The only problem for me was the fleet was full and the boss was AFK. After 6 minutes of cursing and cussing, we managed to find a solution and get me on grid. By the time I landed on grid, the Angels had warped off. Our guys started to loot the field as a few of them went home to go AFK, but they were taking their time about it, so I burned out to orbit. A minute or two later, I was just about to mention we really want to not be here when the reason for not wanting to be here warped back in and started tackling what was left on grid. The Mordus Angels had the numbers now and it was looking grim, so ‘get out’ was called. Already being clear of the melee before it started, I had no trouble warping out and getting home, leaving a couple of tackled ships behind.

We reshipped to armour and exchanged fire in small skirmishes on the WH, but by the time we had enough people back at keyboard, Mordus Angels had re-thought committing to an engagement and docked back up. It was looking like that was that, but my hopes of getting a fight were rekindled as a new signature appeared. Jumping into my Stratios, I found an incoming WH from a C2. A bunch of frigates and an Exqueror Navy waited on the other side. As backup arrived, the frigates scattered and the Exqueror was pulling away from me fast. Zooming in, it looked like it was a shield tanked, railgun-boat and it was going like the clappers. I could see the idea behind it, but surely there’s a better hull he could use. That’s unless the purpose was to blueball tacklers, in which case, it worked a charm. I was getting a strong feeling that it was time for me to take a break.

Upon returning to the keyboard, I saw that O’nira was scouting the other incoming null we had and had found another C5 connecting to the same system. He’d posted a D-scan result in corp and I recognised the tag instantly – Serene Vendetta “Oh, we’re fighting these guys.” O’nira got a D-scan of their fleet, which was moving and I reshipped an alt into a cov-ops legion to keep eyes in the nullsec while I got swapped the Stratios for a Loki. The Brawls Deep fleet headed O’nira off at the connection to our WH and bubbled up. They definitely had the numbers on us and had brought plenty of logi. None of that bothered us. You fly smart with a balanced composition, you can negate the numbers advantage. 6 Legions, 4 Proteus’, 2 Loki, 1 Arazu, 1 Falcon, 4 guardians and a devoter. O’nira skipped through their fleet back home to reship. Of course, the disadvantage of all this happening in null was, thanks to local, it was obvious my alt was sat there watching them.

Traba Regina> o7

Val> Hey there Trabs

Traba Regina> we got a fight here mate?

Val> Give us a sec

Val> Can't quite pull your numbers, so you'll have to wait ;)

Some of our guys were worried about the sheer number of Legions they were fielding, but while I was chatting to Traba in local, I was using the opportunity to take a closer look at their ships.

Jay> They’re all HAM

Myst> If they are HAM, they’ll have neuts fitted

Jay> No, they’ve not got the right subs. They’re full HAM, all 6 of them.

That made things a lot easier. It was a fleet devoid of any subtlety. All dps and no flexibility. It’s like some guy turning up on your doorstep in full plate mail and holding a Morningstar, asking for a fight while forgetting you can simply slip a simple poignard under his bascinet. With a number of us dual-boxing, we prepared said poignard. 5 Proteus, 4 Tengus, 2 Lokis, 2 Legions, Phobos, an Astarte and an Archon to level the field. As the fleet assembled, Natasha Donnan decided to add a cheeky comment in local.

Natasha Donnan> aww, we didn't kill your venture fleet :)

Now, that was a real shame because Nat is just about the nicest guy you’ll meet in Eve. Easy going and a good laugh, but haughty remarks that imply he was entitled to kill the venture fleet are a good way of making yourself primary. Although I can kind of understand why he’d do it. Brawls had obviously scouted the system, seeing it was my new home, had the intention of making me regret leaving by showing everyone they were big boys now. I’d probably want to do the same, had the situation been reversed. However, I’d probably not be so brazen about it – just incase.

So, as we’d already established, Nat was primary. Our Tengu’s had rendered their mass of Guardians ineffective, and Nat’s Legion did not stand upto the punishment for very long [apologies for those links - eve kill was borked at time of writing - will amend later] and my autocannons sent his pod on the highsecexpress. Secondary had already been called but I threw in a couple of names over comms of who their likely FC’s were. Another Legion went down along with an Arazu before we brought the DPS to bear on their likeliest FC, Traba Regina. A couple of cycles of reps landed on his Legion but nowhere near enough to prevent him following Nat in decorating the battlefield with his own wreck. I made sure not to leave him any time to unplug his slave set. Traba may have been off the field, but with so much new blood in their group, I had no doubt there would be a secondary I didn’t know about. Cutting off the head of the beast didn’t seem so important with their reps all but nullified. Just to be sure, I’d positioned my Legion in a position to intercept the guardians. Decloaking, I burned for them to neut out the cap chain they’d managed to establish.

At this point, Brawls seemed to have adopted a similar tactic. I found both Jay and Val jammed out by the Falcon and my Loki was being lit up. What was unfortunate for them was on this occasion, I wasn’t FC. It was called earlier for someone who wasn’t dual-boxing to call targets, which ruled me out. Then, over comms, something reassuring from our carrier pilot:

Myst> Guys, make sure you broadcast when you’re in half shields

Jay> Err, I’m in half armour. Gonna need them reps.

Happily, I didn’t hit hull before the Archon attended the Loki, but annoyingly, the Falcon had me locked down. At this point, I take my hat off the that Falcon pilot (I believe it was Blackmoon Thrawn?). There was no let-up in the jams and without the Legion disrupting the Guardians cap, Brawls Deep were able to hold reps and I was becoming frustrated as another pod was there for the taking and just begging for some 220mm mercy. He was keeping Brawls very much in the fight and our damps were doing nothing to stop him. Fair play.

>Kill the pod. Come on, somebody, kill that pod!

Jay> Still jammed…

I decided to do something risky to try and get back into the fight. Jay was no longer primary and able to burn back to the WH though the bubble while Val was out by the guardians not tackled at all. I jumped Jay in and out, chancing polarisation while warping Val back and forth to a celestial to remove the attentions of the Falcon. It wasn’t long before I was back on grid, by which time Brawls Deep had brought reinforcements in the form of an Archon of their own and had upped the ante with a Naglfar. This was where our preparation fell slightly short. The response would have been a similar escalation on our part, but O’nira was realising and regretting that we still hadn’t brought several caps, including his Phoenix, back home. To make matters worse, the Naglfar pilots were engaged in subcaps. The Moros option was still there. It was just a matter of finding one.

Our Archon was suffering. Their subcaps were trying desperately to keep it out of jump range while the Naglfar gave it a pounding. Their own carrier wasn’t reacting quick enough to our dps, and with the neuts finally engaging the Guardians, we were able to pop a loki (+pod). We still had no Dreadnaught and the Archon didn’t look like it was going to last its triage cycle. All we could do from here was to get everything back into jump range for when it did happen. Brawls Deep responded by moving their support ships on top of the hole as well. As the Archon exploded, our fleet jumped home and I breathed a sigh of relief that the polarisation gamble worked in getting me back into the fight, but wasn’t done too late that I was left hanging out to dry. The Brawls Deep HIC pilot was quick to follow and put the bubble up. Our pilots who hadn’t already warped off held cloak, intelligently.

I say intelligently because from our point of view, it’s our home system. From here we can field not just another Carrier (which was called for when we realised they would pursue), but several. Not to mentioned the dreads. Brawls Deep must have thought they could smell blood. Our reps were gone (until we warp some more in, that is) so surely it would be a simple case of mopping up the field, right? I might have been thinking the same thing, but I would have been sure to check the mass on the WH first.

We primaried the Devoter. As their Guardians jumped in, the neut legions were right on top of them and soon took a hammering after the Devoter was forced to jump back out. Some of the guardians followed until the collapse of the WH meant the end of any kind of contest. The fleet jumped on blubess’ Legion and tackled the remaining guardians as 3TEARS tried to make a break for it in his Proteus, which hadn’t escaped my notice. 29km, 30km, 31km… links were down, so I had to apply a little more heat to the Loki that already had heat gauges full on the active racks. I started to close the distance and then – jammed again! The Falcon hadn’t returned to torment me, but Bigiboi had put dishonour drones on me, briefly jamming me until his Guardian went down. The Proteus still hadn’t managed to warp and I re-establishedlock and tackle before the fleet closed in to finish the job. Last off was a familiar name, but not from Serene Vendetta. Themad boatman I knew from a nullsec pewliday. He was formerly a member of the truly terrible ‘King’s Bastards’ whose fleets I delighted in wiping the floor with whenever they took one of their frequent roams through our space. As we finished off themad boatman’s guardian and capsule, Bigiboi greeted us in local.

Bigiboi > gf

Bigiboi > :)

Bigiboi > hey Jay

Jay Joringer > Hey Bigi

blubess > good fight. who wants to come over to my place and spoon?

Bigiboi > hehehe

Takashi Haul > gf guys

Takashi Haul > shame we jumped in =d

Normally I’d either try and hunt down stragglers in their pods if they were stuck or leave them to the indignation of having to safe up and self-destruct, but Bigi is a genuinely cool guy. He is absolutely terrible at impersonations or mimicking accents, and I think that is being quite kind. I thought it would be rude not to offer him bookmarks to highsec in exchange for a song. He was so gracious about it we gave him and blubess shuttles to go with their bookmarks out, and I got back in the stratios to make sure the way out was clear. I’ll apologise for the video. The delivery of Wrecking Ball was so heart-rending that it reduced me to tears. At least, I think heart-rending is the right way to describe it. No. Painful. Painful is what I meant.

It’s hard to convey a sense of time while describing all this, the fight with Mordus started before 1900 GMT and the end of the Brawls fight was at 22:30. The busy night didn’t quite stop there. While I was scouting the wrecked brawlers out, our C2 neighbors started jumping into system for a small skirmish with our guys. As I was heading back to reship [Natasha Donnan is inviting you do a conversation]

Natasha Donnan > fun fight

Natasha Donnan > i guess you guys won the isk war?

He went on to complain about the amount of EWAR we fielded. I didn’t apologise. You want to beat superior numbers, that’s how you do it. He did also mention that they were going to petition the WH closure, which we did laugh at a bit about. They must have assumed it was a fresh hole. Oh well. I’d like to take this opportunity to formally welcome Brawls Deep to Jay-space.

[Dizzy Uzzy is inviting you do a conversation]. Another one? Interesting.

Dizzy Uzzy > Ffs Jay why you take our fight?

Dizzy Uzzy > We were waiting to hit Brawls

Dizzy Uzzy > lol

Dizzy Uzzy > Looks like you had a good one though

Apparently he’d lost a Cynabal to Brawls Deep earlier in the night and his lowsec group were waiting to jump their fleet until they saw a few pods trickle back down the chain. He left saying that if I was ever around Kor-Azor, there’d always be a fight there for me. Well, that’s one connection I just might have to look out for and hope they bring the fight as good as Brawls Deep did.