Teetering on the Shield Edge

Much of the past weeks since the last update have focused on the South of the region. Good logistics there have proved a double-edged sword: fights with no losses sap the enemy's motivation to fight and thus makes it harder to find the good scraps.

But on Sunday we got to fight Ombil & friends again in the North - the first large engagement with them since my last report. One of their towers was coming out of reinforced.

We formed up a gang of 30-odd and went to the target system in Hoseen. Hostile scouts along the way tried to conjure a fittingly moribund atmosphere during the ride :)

[ 2009.06.21 16:55:55 ] Big Jobs > one day, your all gonna die
[ 2009.06.21 16:56:10 ] Big Jobs > some of you in a lot of pain
[ 2009.06.21 16:56:19 ] Big Jobs > cancer... 15% of you
[ 2009.06.21 16:56:39 ] Big Jobs > 5% of you will be s***ing your nappy in a care home

We're obviously making a good impression.

Once we arrived in Hoseen we were pleasantly surprised to find 100 in local including our numbers, with the rest all hostile. This looked promising for a fight, with most of their fleet (mixed battleships and support) waiting inside the tower.

After jumping in two carriers, we warped to the tower and started hitting it with battleships. A few minutes in, their tacklers rushed out of the shield to get points on the carriers, and a cyno went down at another hostile tower in system. Ten capitals then warped to the tower: an assorted mix of Hellstrome Alliance, Sons of Tangra and Ombil Coalition capitals.

Surprisingly most of their caps warped to the tower at zero, landing inside the shields. A single Phoenix dropped outside. Bait? Mistyped password? Who knows. At any rate, we killed half a dozen tacklers, a Malestrom and a hell-for-leather Drake who'd obviously been tasked with a do-or-die mission to get a point on something big.

With nothing scrammed, our two caps jumped out and we warped off. That might have been the end of it but both the hostiles and indeed my own fleet felt that on recent record these were odds we should take.

I wasn't entirely sold (given the numbers against us) but thought it might be worth waiting for an opportunity nonetheless, since the hunger for a fight was there. An opportunity duly provided itself - some of the hostile caps jumped out (presumably frustrated at the failure of the pos fleet to land a point on something) and the five or so that remained were split between being outside and inside the shield (making an initial spider difficult).

To their surprise we warped back in our battleships, with a single carrier in the form of a soon overworked Davinci (shield repping an armour gang, to add to the madness) and tackled one of their Thanatos outside the shield. The other caps quickly came out of the shield to help him, along with their support fleet. Of course, this presented new opportunities to tackle carriers with outward momentum, even though our original target had made it back in with low armour.

A decent ruckus ensued, though messier than the average HARK fight due to the mixed tanking.

Tapin's mega gets a good bump on one of the carriers. Moments later Gunny gets a good one on him too.

We start primarying support whilst trying to keep webs on capitals

To add some madness to the mix, a blue takes an oblique view of his smartbombing role. Relentless, even. Now you see a lot of friendly drones.

Now you don't :)

One of the carriers who made it back in.

And one of those who didn't.

The final tally for the fight, including two Free Worlds (blue) losses, was 40-9 in our favour and we held the (mine) field.

http://www.rooksandkings.com/killboard/?a=kill_related&kll_id=965