The Eye of the Beholder

We try to have some kind of special event occur at least once every month in XIII. I'm not counting this month's as the sexual health advice clinic we had to set up for one of our members (who will remain totally anonymous). Apparently, he had managed to contract chlamydia in his eye. Now, I wasn't even aware that was possible, but then again, I've never been quite careless enough to have any kind of fluid mishap to that area of my face.

Needless to say, we were all very sympathetic. 

OK, we took the piss mercilessly. We also have a tradition of granting a title for notable actions, so to celebrate such an incredible feat (more admitting it to everyone than catching it), we gave him the title of "The eyes have it".

This did end up giving me an idea, though. I'd read about the Eve portrait competitions run by Reality X (below).

If you've not visited www.eveportraits.com, I would definitely say it's worth a visit. Basically, Reality X runs Eve Online's closest thing to a beauty contest and gives out prizes for the best portraits. What is interesting is how unexpected the winners have been, but afterall, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I came up with idea of running XIII's own portrait competition. This would have been easy enough for me to do, however, Reality X had experience in this sort of thing and would likely choose some interesting winners, given how left-field some of the winners of his official contests have been - in my humble opinion. So, I got in contact with him and he agreed to judge our own private contest. Top bloke!

I announced it to the guys and some even made their way to K-Space to find a station, a NEX store and a character re-customisation button. A few days later, Reality X sent us his verdict:

1st Place - Gabriela Arch

RX - "Gabriela: I really liked the simplicity of Gabriela's portrait, the elegant posturing of the figure looking away, and the neutral brown colours of the background, hair, eyes and clothes. It's very well done and comes together nicely."

JJ - Interesting choice for a winner. Wouldn't be the one that I picked, but that's the whole point have having RX judge it for us. Can't argue with his reasoning though.

2nd Place - Athanor Ruthoern

RX - "Athanor: Most of the time when I'm looking for outstanding portraits I try to see if the player spent time with it, maybe by changing the structure of the face, or adding little details (instead of just keeping a "default" face). I can see time and effort was spent with Athanor's portrait. Also, the shadow placement, background choice, and again the posturing of the face looking up is well done."

JJ - To be fair, Athanor did re-do her portrait for this. Definitely better than it was before, but I'm not sold on the blonde cornrows! She did put effort into the new portrait though, so that's fair enough.

3rd Place - Thornir

RX - "Thornir: I picked Thornir because he just looks like a bad-ass dude I woudn't want to run into in a dark alley. The Guristas coat is a nice touch with the background, again with an overall brown colour scheme which works."

JJ - For fuck sake. Really? I was expecting some left-field choices for winners. When I announced the winners to XIII's directors, there was much swearing about this choice. Not because it's a bad choice per se, but for the effect it might have on his ego. Oh well, hopefully it made his eye feel better ;)

Unlucky for Northern Associates

In XIII, we're developing something of a glossary of our own slang terms. For example, "Pink-boxed" means someone has been lost to wife/GF aggro. "Arting" is the completion of a mundane, ordinary task with...

"Content day" is what happens on the rare occasions when you log in and fight until you log off.

I'd logged in as our people were scouting a new static chain and an incoming C4 chain. The static C5 had a C2 static and a bubble-camp had been spotted in the B274 to highsec in the C2. Stillborn Sun had a bunch of ships. Highsec WH's aren't the best place to fight anyone, so we needed some bait they couldn't refuse. Odidi volunteered his Orca, hoping to pull them away from the hole to tackle him as he landed in the bubble. We fleeted up with as many webbing ships as possible to keep them from jumping to highsec. Given how light the composition was, I foolishly decided to dual-box a Svipul and a Daredevil. It hadn't occurred to me until we were in warp to 'rescue' Odi's Orca how fragile my choice of ships was, and for a moment, I wondered how I'd direct the fleet while keeping both ships alive.

Jay > "Er... Kill.... things. Kill all the things. Kill them hard."

Utari > " . . . I can't believe you just said that."

And we've now got the appending of "...it hard." in the glossary as

Still, even with such epic fleet direction, I still managed to almost lose the Svipul. I was considering how not good it was to hear an armour alarm on a local tanked shield ship when reps from Utari's scimitar landed. And after all that, I only managed to get on killmail for the Catalyst, missing out on the Vexor completely, with my Daredevil seeminly useless and a couple of their ships made it through the connection to highsec.

We thanked them for content and as they were expressing their disbelief that the Orca was actually bait, we realised why they were camping the highsec with a bubble as a Gnosis landed in the bubble.

As we head back, we get called to jump out of a direct null as one of our pilots bit off more than he could chew. At the same time, Gab notices a familiar tag in the chain through an incoming C4 - Unseen Wolves. As a corporation, we'd had our first big fight again these guys a while back. On that occasion we'd be outnumbered by around 3:1 and while our numbers had grown, I still wasn't confident we could field comparable numbers. We had to get guys checking that C4 chain while we committed a fleet to null, where to local renters had expressed their intentions to fight in local - something of a rarity.

I'd usually link a battle report at this point, but things got messy. As we started to engage the locals, Unseen Wolves had beat us to the punch and had moved through the chain quicker than our scouts could find where they were coming from, dropping a once again impressively large fleet on us as we prepared for an altogether different fight. The initial exchange saw us lose several guardians in exchange for a Sacrilege,2 Navy Exqurors and a Svipul. We could have easily lost more, with Unseen Wolves fielding about 10 more ships than us so we called in carriers in an attempt to keep the fleet up, but not before CommanderCane's proteus went down. The Wolves bugged out while they still had the killboard advantage.

All the while, O'nira was lamenting not taking the fight in nullsec. We'd engaged some of their bait on the wormhole to Lazarus, but we knew full well they were waiting with some backup behind the only gate out of the system. And their backup included a Thanatos.

The brawl with Unseen Wolves hadn't taken too long to fizzle out, in terms of some eve fights, so I was still confident that Northern Associates would still be up for fighting. After all, you know renters are serious when they are prepared to commit carriers for a roaming gang. We replenished our fleet guardians and took a couple of ships to engage their bait/tackle.

That was enough to get their carrier both committed and tackled. We'd brought neuting ships in anticipation of this, but as they ship-scanned the Thanatos, they noticed it was fitted with a cyno. I wont pretend that the new information had given me a dilemma. No, we had already committed our fleet and the guys wanted the Thanatos to go down. Northern Associates had other ideas about the fate of the Thanatos and warped in 3 archons to keep it up. Now, this was a dilemma.

With the hole already massed from the fight with Unseen Wolves and knowing the Northern associates carriers were rocking cyno's, our fleet needed a little something-something. Oh well, what's the worst that could've happened, eh? I went and got the Naglfar...

Apparently, they'd called for help that they could cyno in during that fight, but were told it was their mess, so no cyno's were lit. The most interesting part of the evening was squeezing everything back through the wormhole. Cane was the last ship through with his Bhaalgorn before I jumped the Nag home. I instructed him to think thin as he jumped. Thankfully, it worked and the emergency cyno I was preparing wasn't needed.

Battlereport

Unlucky for: No Vacancies

WHY SO LATE? WHY SO LATE!?!

I know. I've been slacking on here, but there's a few other things I've been working on, so I'm playing catch up with the blog. This probably wont be followed up be a another post for at least a few days either, just to make up for the lack of posts. I don't even get hassled by Utari either, but I think he's also been slacking on his blog, so I've not been feeling too guilty as a consequence.

I know a couple of people have been looking forward to my version of the No Vacancies fight - yeah, the one that was about a month ago... well, a month and then some. Not being able to write at work anymore -thanks to the new job- has really taken a toll on updates, but I don't think that's the problem. Writing at home is probably easier anyway. At least it would be if I didn't log in to teamspeak. "Jay, we've got pew." "Jay, do you want to interview this guy?" "Jay there's some russian talking in local!"

OK, OK, no more excuses.

So, yeah, there's a tiny bit of completely friendly history with us and No Vacancies. Firstly, there's the part where I nearly joined them when they were still under the guise of Void Legion and I was disillusioned with Disavowed. Then Red Coat Conspiracy rocked up to evict them (which was blogged about in The Centre of the Universe). The outcome was disappointing, with Void Legion becoming part of Disavowed, but the guys moved on again and formed No Vacancies after I'd joined United System's Commonwealth. While under the USYSC banner, we fought NVACA in their home system. The mass on their C3 static caught us out, allowing them to escalate with capitals, which did turn the tide to their favour.

Then I was contacted by my old buddy, Moore McRay, who was once again looking for a WH corp. I didn't think he'd fit in with USYSC, so I sent him over to Viscis, who recruited him. The first time I'd flown with Moore, he got really freaked out by a random mail he got from someone passing him in highsec. It was a simple greeting followed by "I really like your portrait" and nothing more. So, as part of initiating new members to [XIII-], our new guys have to mail him something complementary about his toon.

Moore McRay > jaaay

Jay Joringer > Hey Moore :)

Moore McRay > i need to put all those mails on reddit soon

Eisu > agreed.

Jay Joringer > Can you help me pick a winner?

Moore McRay > you're not hitchhiking here

Moore McRay > uhm as for the best mail

Moore McRay > i need more

Jay Joringer > No problem

Moore McRay > LOL

Then we have 'Doc', AKA Zerolaws. I've mentioned him before since I have NVACA to thank for him joining XIII. They blew up his multi-billion ISK Stratios and refused to let him join them because he had no PvP experience. I've also mentioned that Viscis said "Fuck you!" after I told him I recruited Doc because Viscis rejected him, but I think it's worth covering again, not least because he'd been awesome for us. Still got lots to learn, but is taking it his stride.

So with all that background, the next meeting between our two groups was always going to be an interesting one. Especially with the old USYSC guys joining XIII wanting round 2 with NVACA, and with me and Utari wanting to get Doc involved in a good old dunking at their expense. And then it happened.

"Loads of stuff on scan in the static. [№] Anyone recognise this tag?"

We knew it would happen eventually - such is WH space. But in all honesty, it happened a little sooner than I was hoping for. At the time, XIII only had 64 members with NVACA breaking the century on membership. Of course, this doesn't mean massive amounts if you take PI alts and their timezone crossover into consideration, however it's still a reasonable indicator and I was fully expecting to be outnumbered.

Fighting outnumbered is something regular readers know that XIII delights in. To do so successfully, you need every dirty little advantage you can get your filthy mitts on. So, I felt inclined to remind them of something in the pub channel

Jay Joringer > Biscuits promised he'd bring the fight to us next time.

"Biscuits" is my pet name for Viscis. I don't think he's taken to it, which doesn't surprise me to be honest. It's a tiny bit condescending and doesn't even really sound like Viscis, but what the hell, let's throw some subtle provocation into the mix.

Galdur provided some extra incentive by parking his Phoenix a few clicks off the hole. The NVACA boys went for it and started streaming subcaps through the H296. They probably weren't expecting Galdur's Phoenix to be fit for nailing subcaps and it started raining torps on their fleet as out own warped in.

While this was going on, I was watching the fight unfold in a covert ops. I'd noticed that Viscis had logged on his alt, Andur Konnake and was only on grid with T-X47b, his boosting toon in a Damnation. What this probably meant was he was holding Andur, his dedicated Naglfar pilot, in reserve. Warping back to my POS, I prepared my own Naglfar for a showdown.

I wasn't waiting long. The wormhole disrupted as Andur's Naglfar jumped in and I warped 'Rising Sun' into the fight, despite NVACA having a HIC on grid with a bubble up. It was a gamble to split our dreads up, but I thought the odds were good.

This overly optimistic opinion was reinforced by the appearance that I was getting the better of the initial exchange between the two dreadnaughts, so I left the Phoenix to increase the heart-rate of any subcap pilot he decided to lock up - something that was becoming increasingly difficult with our own subcap losses starting to become worrying. No Vacancies quickly responded, switching all their damage and neuts to me. It's at this point that I found that after I had imbibed a mild(ish)quantity of rum, that the 'consume' option on my blue pill booster wasn't as apparent as I remember it being. I was staring at the context menu thinking: "Where the hell is it? Shouldn't be too hard to find. It's just one word, and it begins with 'C'. Ah-ha! Compare, there it is! Wait, no...".

As the fight went on, the combination of the damage and the energy neuts starting taking a heavy toll on the Nag. I probably should have got the fleet to engage my opposite number, but other problems took priority. Losing the dreadnaught was not an option I was prepared to entertain, and the timing was favourable for me to drop out of siege and get capped up from the Archon that was now on grid, albeit 20km away from me. Well, at least Galdur would be able to refit if he needed. I called for the Archon to lock me up as the siege timer ticked down and eventually expired as my Naglfar hit structure. It was still bleeding hull as the reps landed, but didn't drop much lower than 80% once there was enough capacitor to restart the shield tank. They must have thought they were close as the damage stayed on me for a little while afterwards, but when their focus started to swift, more of our support ships went down.

No Vacancies went balls deep, bringing an Archon into the fight. Props to the boys - they really meant it and perhaps they scented blood after depleting our subcap fleet. That's the problem with flopping a strong hand; if you don't read your opponent right, he can still bad beat you on the river. And XIII were rallying. Despite having less numbers, I knew that home advantage would make the difference and alts of the guys who were podded started warping in to the fight to reinforce what we had left on grid. A second Archon made sure that the remaining subcaps would survive and as the my Naglfar approached a state of readiness to drop back into siege, Utari bought my Moros in to help out with Odidi bringing in an additional Naglfar. With that much firepower trained on it, the Archon lasted close to 2 minutes. The NVACA subcaps started to bail as soon as their Naglfar hit armour. We tackled whatever was too slow to escape, but relented pursuit in respect of them bringing one hell of a fight. We offered to show them the way out, but their scouts were already on the ball.

The fight was as fun as it was intense, but it wasn't the best part of the night. As we were looting the field...

Orange Aideron > so ... pew pew

Orange Aideron > ?

Blue-Fire at their subtle best. Galdur suggested over comms that we do the same to them. Thanks to No Vacancies, we had little choice with our PvP ship stock suddenly in a less than desirable, depleted state. I consented, with more than a strong feeling that Blue-Fire would not take what was being offered. I was not disappointed, and the guys were treated to some glorious rage with additional fat-finger syndrome, courtesy of Orange Aideron:

Orange Aideron > lol oh come on

Orange Aideron > the gayness is sooo stronk

Orange Aideron > 2 archons

Orange Aideron > you guys suck

Orange Aideron > seriously guck you
Orange Aideron > im so fucked off right now!

Orange Aideron > okay well gl rolling it tell your guys to log its over for tonight.

While Irish Saint apologised for not having the numbers to contend with what we had, there was a collective smugness going around XIII. And it was probably a good few days before we stopped saying "guck you!" to each other.

Otherwise, here is the battlereport for No Vacancies. Guck them too.

And the vid. Guck youtube.

All The Small Things

A few people have been asking about a certain fight that happened this week. This isn't it! This is just a quick little something-something until that's written up (soon™). 

Sometimes it's not the big fights or the big kills that make you smile the most.

Every now and again when we got a Wolf-Rayet static with a quiet chain, we'd take advantage of the system bonus and take out a fleet of Coercers and Catalysts backed up with Augorors to run a few sites. It something that a few of the newer guys to the corp had never tried, and given how refreshing we had found it compared to cap escalations, it was something we were eager to get them in on.

The static had some activity earlier in the evening, but it seemed all OEG Industrial's pilots seemed to be offline - something that was not unusual for a russian corp with low activity on the killboard at that time of night. Sherpa watched the connection while I set up an Eos in a safespot, while being acutely aware that the Eos cost more than our entire ratting fleet combined.

It's no secret that the Wolf-Rayet bonus in C5's gives certain frigates and destroyers in the region of 1000dps and a low enough signature radius combined with resists decent enough to handle the incoming damage from a sleeper site with just a couple of Augorors. A single site will pay for the whole fleet with some change, but it's easy to lose the ships if you aren't careful with transversal and sig bloom from MWD. And as PvE in Eve goes, it's actually pretty fun.

After a couple of sites, we'd brought in a Noctis to clean up after us. That was when I noticed a Loki appear briefly on Dscan. Odi said the tag was something he'd seen on the ships before the Russians logged off. If they were logging back in, I doubted they'd take kindly to us running their sites. Despite how the Destroyers performed versus the sleepers, the small amount of armour hitpoints didn't make them viable for a sustained battle against a balanced fleet. The raw dps a group of them ought to be enough to deter solo gankers, however the concern was for the Noctis.

We sent the Noctis home as soon as the combat probes appeared on Dscan. With no new signatures and nothing having jumped past Sherpa, it had to be the locals. And it has to be said, they were crap at scanning. Eventually, we caught the probes on close range Dscan to our fleet. A few minutes passed, while they must have been getting eyes on field and perhaps a warp in, but suddenly the probes moved and started to home in on the Eos.

If I'm flying the Eos, it usually means I'm dual-boxing, so I tend not to put a point on it. The midslots I interchange for various types of EWAR. On this occasion, it was still fitted with sensor dampeners. Just as I was lamenting this choice, a Proteus landed on grid and started to lock up the Eos, perhaps expected a helpless offgrid boosting ship. Oops! I couldn't have been happier that he'd gone for the Eos over anything else. I returned the lock, setting drones on the aggressor. What was worse for the Proteus pilot was that I fit my Eos with neuts in the spare high slots, so it would only be a matter of time until he was dead in the water. The only problem was that he could still warp out.

This is an eventuality we had planned for, however. Sherpa decloaked his own Proteus to point his opposite number. To add insult to injury, we warped the ratters, along with a Sabre in to get on the killmail and the pod. 

Resistance is Futile

The fact that Waldemar Pawlak was hanging around in our pub channel was bugging Utari. I know what you're thinking -  the former prime minister of Poland hanging around in the public channel of an eve online wormhole corporation might bug a few people, but it wasn't actually him. It was his Hard Knocks Inc. recruiter namesake. He did eventually find a way of breaking the ice:

Waldemar Pawlak > so... whats going on in here?

Utari Onzo > Sharing fail fits

Jay Joringer > Nothing. Pub channel stuffs.

Utari Onzo > Wanna see my drake fit?

Waldemar Pawlak > nope, thanks

Jay Joringer > I do

Jay Joringer > Unless it's not armour/sensor damp fit

Utari Onzo > Aw damn

Waldemar Pawlak > well, i have my own

Waldemar Pawlak > i dont really need to play with others' drakes

Utari Onzo > RUSE is on sale on steam. Nostalgia time here I come

Waldemar Pawlak > i bought rise of nations last night

Waldemar Pawlak > ffs, i loved that game but now its so tiny on a 4k screen that it made its unplayable

Utari Onzo > Lol

Utari Onzo > I looked at playing stronghold crusader 2

Utari Onzo > Was bitterly dissaointed it's jsut a Stronghold Crusader 1 reskin

Utari Onzo > Anyone know if they fixed Assassin's creed Unity yet or is it still broken as fuck?

Waldemar Pawlak > dunno

Hemez PeYo > o/

Waldemar Pawlak > sry, slow to respond - carrier tackled

Waldemar Pawlak > so... you guys are c5-c5...

Waldemar Pawlak > and youre recruiting?

Jay Joringer > Aye

Waldemar Pawlak > if youre capable of c5-c5 wh how come i didnt see your application to HK?

Jay Joringer > Didn't realise you were recruiting

Waldemar Pawlak > we always are!

Jay Joringer > Actually, I do prefer the smaller gang fights.

Waldemar Pawlak > i see

Well, it was a small fib. I was well aware Hard Knocks were recruiting. I just didn't realise they considered it obligatory for C5 pilots to put in applications to them. But still, it's cute of them to try to absorb WH corporation while they are still new and trying to expand, rather than having another populated J-space system.

Another offer. This time it was an invitation to join an alliance. Enter Falconsfury via eve mail:

Hello!

After looking into your corp I wanted to extend an offer to join my alliance Vanguard of the Phoenix.

We are a WH C5 Alliance who does mainly PVE content with PVP when it comes our way.  We hope to expand both our PVE and PVP options with the addition of some new people.

If interested we can talk further about the Alliance to see if you would fit in.

Our posting can be found here.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=5383174#post5383174

"PvP when it comes our way" That one killed any consideration stone dead. Not to mention any alliance whose name you could append to phrase "Harry Potter and the..." and have it legitimately sound like a rejected book title should perhaps be avoided. I ignored the mail.

Then another. This time a merge, and merge offers tend to come from people whose activity has dropped off or have been evicted so that larger alliances *cough*[KICK]*cough* can have a farming hole.

Hi Jay,

My alliance is looking for another WH group to merge with.  While we are trying to recruit new blood to our current alliance, we are certaintly open to joining up with another group.  The years and real life have cost us some valuble members that its been hard to replace.

We currently live in a C5 / C3 WH and are open to options for working together with another WH alliance (including moving / mergers etc).

We have about 15 active people throughout the week, with numerous alts etc.  Everyone is tech 3 / with numerous capital alts, Archons etc.

Our main problem is numbers, 15 people just isnt enough to keep the ball rolling every day with RL and such.

If this interests you, please send me a mail.

Thanks!

Once again, it was from Falconsfury. Scrutiny of their killboard looked like they'd be pretty hard to work with. Couple that with a leadership base in a different timezone, which in my experience is asking for trouble. And these guys looked suspiciously like Solus Blacksun all over again - someone who could talk the talk, but not walk the walk.

The next mail was my favourite. It was another merger offer from Henrick Toralen of Jaded.:

I'm contacting you in regards to your corp, in curiosity about a possible alliance merge, If you'd have any intrest in this let me know.

Here our the stats.
C5-C5 WH 
The Natural Order
Jaded: Currently 12 PoS's 89 Members. 
High Self Esteem: 9 Members fairly active. 

Both Corps live in the WH.

Yours truely,

Hendrick Toralen [Jaded]

This one even had pretty colours. I remember Billy Hardcore from RCC's invasion of Void Legion's home system and I had to wonder what the offer had cost him to make. Either way, I had no intention of flying with the guy, so I said no in the most diplomatic way I could administer:

o/ Hendrick

Thank you for your interest in our alliance. Enigma Project is not currently considering recruiting corporations, however 13. will look at applications from individual pilots who are active in the EU window. 

We are listed as 'newbro friendly', which is true of our recruitment doctrine, however I would be sceptical about recruiting rookies en masse at the moment. In the meantime, I would recommend Red Federation/ Blue Republic as well as Noir Academy to augment the skills of anyone in your alliance interested in PvP, and also this online course in spelling and grammar for yourself.

Kind Regards,

Jay Joringer

To his credit, he took it well and responded with a simple "lol".

But this wasn't the end of things. Perhaps spurred by the success of Utari's birthday roam in mining barges, to which he invited United System's Commonwealth, Galdur Trudaihnel made the same offer of a merger.

When me, Utari and Odi left USYSC, we all hoped things would carry on as normal and we'd have two active groups in C5 space instead of one. Obviously things hadn't panned out that way. The prospect of flying with the guys again was something we all thought would be a great thing, and to be honest, all the offers of merges an recruitment had worn me down. USYSC would still exist, but Enigma Project would be assimilating some good pilots into our collective.

Outnumbered, but not Outgunned

I've had a couple of complaints about this blog. Not quite to the degree that Red Coat Conspiracy (RIP) or indeed Brawls Deep (RIP) complained, but complaints nonetheless. To prove I take reader satisfaction very seriously I am now going to address those complaints.

The first complaint is from Thornir. Hewas bemoaning that fact that he hasn't been mentioned thus far. Which thereby resolves the complaint. And if no one knows who Thornir is, just try to imagine a window-licking, Danish AliG. Just less funny.

The other complaint is from Utari. Apparently, I don't update this enough. By virtue of mentioning this fact, I am now considering this complaint resolved. While waiting for any subsequent instalments, he's tried to fill the apparent blog-void by writing his own. I've been assured that there's no need to worry about there being crossover in what I'll be writing as it's 'in-character'. As soon as he'd said that I accused him of reading a certain Dussette's blog, to which he pleaded guilty. So far, no one believes that this very blog is all very much in-character. I'm not actually smug at all in real life. In any case, onceyou are done here, Utari's blog is certainly worth a read.

As for my lack of updates, it's not like things have been slow. Just real busy! While recruitment has dropped off, PvP content has picked up quite well. It's also inadvertently given us a new question to ask prospective recruits; "You've got 7 guys online - would you fleet up to provoke a 28 man fleet into a fight?"

Our scouts had been watching a C4 connected to the same static C5 we had. I've got to say, C4 space has become a lot more interesting lately. I'm sure the capital restrictions are a draw for some of the newer corporations and players as much as the dual statics. The way connections and population is at the moment, that's potentially a ridiculous number of systems to scout and keep tabs in the signatures in. They certainly hadn't checked the adjoining C5 thoroughly. Enough to be sending a Venture in to scoop gas while their PvP fleet roamed out of their other static, but not enough to bookmark or scout Lazarus, where we were lurking.

The reports on numbers were a bit sketchy with so many of the Unseen Wolves (the C4 residents) moving around, but it was in excess of 20. They were well equipped too. At least 4 guardians supporting their T3's. As things stood, we had 7 guys. If we had opted to bring a decent number of our own logistics, we wouldn't be able to field enough dps to cut the proverbial mustard. With options so limited, choices tend to make themselves, but choosing to roll to find something different wasn't on the cards - But making it look like we were rolling definitely was.

E'lone and myself logged in a second toon each as Utari did his best to do an impression of a beleaguered rolling Archon while our flotilla waited on the home side of the H296 while the carrier slowboated back to the K162, well within D-scan range of the Venture. The bait had the desired effect and almost instantly, a loki jumped from their C4 home and dropped combat probes.

Utari > This guy is taking ages. I'm almost at zero on the hole

Jay > Burn away for a little bit. When he warps, head back to the hole so it doesn't look too much like a trap.

The intrepid scanner did eventually manage to scan down our capital ship bait and was soon on grid to tackle it. A sabre arrived next, and as the rest of their fleet followed, our own fleet jumped through to meet them. The interdiction probes that the sabre dropped caused the guardians to land conveniently close to our ships and the combination of neuts and ecm made sure their guardians couldn't establish a cap chain effectively and we blitzed through three of them as a fourth scrambled for range. Aware of our range from the carrier, we did not pursue. The other thing I was aware of was that this was the first time most of our fleet had flown together in this kind of engagement. And for Zerolaws, it was the first time he'd ever been in fleet PvP.

It was something that showed. He was eager to prove he could cut it when it came down to a fight and had charged off after a Proteus, perhaps hoping his actions might help turn the tide in our favour. His enthusiasm took him outside of the carrier's rep range, losing him both the ship and his pod.

Utari's carrier was having no trouble keeping the rest of the fleet alive, and with their logi as good as negligible, we were laying down fire on the main body of their fleet, starting with their Armageddon. Their final guardian had put some distance between himself and our fleet, leaving the armageddon in dire straits. In desperation, the geddon's neuts switched to the tacklers and he managed to warp away in low armour. We switched to a Loki but our low numbers saw our tackle neuted away by Unseen Wolves' Legions and another of their ships escaped in the nick of time.

With the Archon feeding cap to the tacklers, we downed a Legion before the Wolves could land more Guardians. Another three joined the fight and far out of our range. We would have to be patient before we could break any of their ships again as the sensor damps forced their logi closer.

The Wolves noticed an error and switched dps to our own armageddon which had drifted out of the Archon's rep range. Solara drifted slowly back but neither fast nor far enough for his ship to make it. With ships down, breaking their fleet would be difficult if not impossible and I called the fleet to burn the 40 clicks back to the WH. As I did, the Unseen Wolves decided to target the Archon, while putting webs and scrams on our retreating ships. Each kilometre ticked by painfully slowly, and as the Archon's capacitor reservoir depleted, the Wolves started to target the Eos. With no reps available, the only choice was to jump home, depriving our fleet of armour links and therefore a big chunk or EHP. The Wolves turned their attention to the rest of the retreating ships who one by one crawled slowly back to jump range, with the exception of Thornir's Tengu (look at that - mentioned twice in one post).

The only remaining question was whether the Archon could last the triage cycle. Utari seemed confident, and none of their fleet had pursued our ships back into Lazarus, opting to focus on the Archon, but as the triage module deactivated, Utari jumped home, putting the wormhole on the verge of collapse and ending the fight.

The battle report suggests that Unseen Wolves won the ISK war, but at 9 vs. 28, I'll happily take the moral victory and the fact that we killed 4 ships while losing 3. All in all, a decent smash and grab but what was encouraging, our new guys enjoyed a good fight and were eager to learn from the experience.   

High Stakes

Recently, a lot of people have been asking me "So, the blog... Where's the new stuff?"

I have very aware that there hasn't been anything new on here for a little while. Of course, there's a couple of problems I have with this. Firstly, there's having the time to write about new stuff and then post it. It's real easy to use the holidays as an excuse here. Until recently, I had the luxury of having a boss who was utterly clueless as to what I actually did, so as a consequence, I did most of my blogging at work. I should probably clarify here that I have not just been sacked for not doing any work, but I have been looking for a new job that's more involved... better paid, better pension, more holidays - the usual stuff.

Secondly, and most importantly, new stuff needs to happen. Of course, things are always happening in Eve, but these thing aren't always worth passing the time with writing about while pretending to be working because your job is so dull you'd rather be playing spaceships.

So, what has happened? New year, new job, new eve corporation. Or more accurately, new-old eve corporation. I've noticed I do get a certain itch when I change jobs in real life to refresh things in game. This in no way whatsoever means that when I've changed corporations in Eve, I've got a new job. It's usually a bigger thing. A new, exciting challenge in real life that gives me new energy and enthusiasm inevitably filters through into the digital world.

There was nothing really wrong with United System's Commonwealth to give me a straight-up, black and white reason for leaving, but there was just a few things I couldn't help but think to myself 'I'd do that differently.' For example, pay people the ISK they're owed - Galmas, take note FFS [edit: thank you for the ISKies Galmas] !

It had been over a year and a half since I created 13. I had originally intended it to be a kind of PvP side-project. With the things you can do solo in high-end W-space being fairly limited, I wanted to use it as a fallback for when things got quiet in Blackstar - when people were still logging in or had logged off. It had worked out that way pretty well. Jano Prim had offered us a place in F.E.R.A.L. while they rented space in Detorid, which presented plenty of small gang opportunities for Setimalas, Odidi and myself AKA Doctor Skinner, Elina Evon and Keeley (before I sold the toon). Seti even set up a twitch stream for a while.

F.E.R.A.L. eventually ended up having to relocate to lowsec after The Unthinkables withdrew renter space. For better or worse, this happened at about the same sort of time that Blackstar got evicted from our C5 home. Blackstar could now work directly with F.E.R.A.L. while figuring out what to do. After Blackstar splintered from Enigma Project and joined Disavowed, relations with F.E.R.A.L. were ruined when Dizzy pointed one of their ratting carriers after they moved back into null, effectively leaving 13. redundant.

I thought we'd given it a decent start though, even if we never recruited more than a few extra members, so like the alliance, I kept hold of it.

For all intents and purposes it might well be a new incarnation of corporation and a resurrection of the alliance, but I see it as 13 version 2.0 - a chance to use what I've learned from the space in between to not repeat mistakes that were made in Blackstar. Bigger ambitions generally mean higher stakes, and not just financially. The spare billions that were padding my, Odi's and Utari's wallets were quickly depleted, but there were no complaints. To have people buying into the idea with the same commitment is awesome.

And whether we like it or not, people are watching how this hand plays out. Guys like Galmas and Moore McRay had been scrutinising the killboards from the get-go, with Moore eager to attempt some light provocation about a Naglfar mishap that involved Lazerhawks seeding in the system for POCO timers.

Jay Joringer > Since you guys are here, you wouldn't mind finishing this one off, would you?

ksig cook > 500mil for our poco removal services

pubway Shi > But link POCO KM if you get it?

Azerath > You have no idea how much trouble your death was :S

Hidden Fremen > ^ lol

No, no. I know how much trouble it must have been all too well! We suspected someone had seeded in. What we got wrong was who. We'd taken some precautions earlier, but a couple of hours later with fleet numbers dwindling they appeared as we were on the penultimate POCO. They'd waited for the golden opportunity and fair play to them. I don't think I'd have had the patience though and Moore left the conversation disappointed that it wasn't a sore point. By the way, if anyone feels like sending Moore a mail about how cute his toon is, it's something I would actively encourage.

We even had Hard Knocks' recruiter asking us why he hadn't seen applications from us instead of setting up our own corporation, which provided us with some amusement. As did ViscisBreeze's attempted goading over us recruiting Zerolaws. Zero had been flying solo for a few years and had lost several billion in a stratios to No Vacancies. Deciding that it was now time to stop flying solo, he asked No Vacancies about joining them, where he was sent packing. Viscis was still buzzing about ganking him while we had got Zero onto TS and were finding out he was actually a really cool guy, albeit with some things to learn about J-space. I straight up told Viscis we were recruiting him, to which he replied "Fuck you!"

Incidentally, this was all shortly before learning that he has a quote from my blog as his desktopbackground. A quote that does infer ever so slightly that he is a bit anal retentive when it comes to API keys and background checks. Only a capsuleer could be proud of that!

To round things off, I will say that I myself am not entirely satisfied with the tenuous link between the title and the content that is usually customary of a smug bastard post. That's because I'm going to finish off with a shameless plug that will reveal at least some duality of meaning. Me and few others have been holding regular poker tournaments for ISK. I think the biggest pot won has been just shy of 2 BillionISK (which sadly went to Zosius and not myself), so if we have any readers who want to join in with our game, send me a mail in-game and I'll invite you to the channel. Instructions on how to get involved as well as tournament timetables will be found there.