Tengu Troubles

With regrouping business finished, we're settling into the new region and getting to know the locals.

In the meantime, a little roundup of a nice small gang fight we had in Assah before we left. It started when we killed a few battleships on station (most escaped), using carriers. In the thick of the action, a Harpy perished also. It took us probably twenty minutes to even find the mail.

When we finally did find it though, we were in for a surprise - a 600million isk, gank-fit Harpy. We've all seen extravagantly fit speed tanks before. So the Gistii MWD is nothing unusual. But T2 cap rigs on an assault ship? Faction damage mods, faction web/scram? It was set as a gank-AF, which is definitely something you don't see all the time.

A Harpy Pilot. Last Week.

This kill led to a nice battle in the neighbouring system in G-5. The pilot returned with a T3 Tengu - the first we've engaged of its class - and a gang of battlecruisers and lighter T2 stuff.

With G-5 being cynojammed we had to leave our caps docked up and change up. I think our gang was particularly well balanced - a damage battleship, a neuting battleship, a bubbler (Onyx), a tackler (Rapier) and myself in an Oneiros for rep.

A Nine Billion Isk sub-capital

There were certainly a few close calls in the fight. For my part, I did the usual thing in a solo logistics ship of racing for the gate, repping until primed, jumping, racing back, jumping, racing back to zero while repping.... rinse and repeat. Twice however, I got caught by warp scramblers that turned off my MWD (once by an arazu and once by a dictor). Luckily I managed to relay this information to Link and get the target insta-neuted, which enabled me to make it back to jump range (in structure).

With Lanari holding him and Zuldjan hitting him, the Tengu went down quite fast without cap. At one stage he de-aggro'd and could have jumped but feeling that the fight was going back their way, decided to re-aggress and try to kill Zuldjan's Megathron (but couldn't break our rep).

Sadly during one of my spells on the other side of the gate while racing back, Brudny's rapier went down, our only casualty, though his tackling helped generate the fight in the first place.

The Tengu's loot certainly didn't disappoint - a full officer fit. When we checked the prices of the sub-systems later the bill is certainly considerable for a sub-capital class: in the region of nine billion isk.

It's quite probably the most expensive T3 ship downed in 0.0 combat thus far, since their introduction. Respect to the pilot for bringing the good stuff and putting it on the line. I think in this case the key was as well balanced as you get a gang of five: damage, anti-cap, bubble, tackle and rep.

Bay of Biscay

Having got used to station games in Assah, CVA have pulled out one of our own favourite tactics: armour tanking BS and escalation with a triage Archon. Perhaps we should be pleased though, to have given some inspiration to the Emperor (or is it Empress - alas my wizard hattery has fallen to rust of late).

Thus we took the opportunity at the weekend to indulge in a little wolfpack warfare.



To say that Stealth Bombers are a little overpowered now would be something of an understatement - though full credit still to Zuldjan and Jack for leading the packs hunting and getting the kills. Saturday's picking included 10 battleships, 8 HAC/CS/Recon, an Orca and some 50 kills total. Also worth mentioning was the continued killing spree of Hans Blix and his team, who roamed deep in Insmother.

We also have a killboard up now at: www.rooksandkings.com/killboard.

By the end of the weekend it should be fully featured (for now just somewhere we can all post).

Hark, a new alliance is formed!

Rooks and Kings [HARK].

Olde English and a touch of Spice.

Starships respond to HARK forces.

Hitting towers

We'll be hitting towers this weekend, so keep sieging pants to hand. Hopefully we'll also have the alliance name set up (presently organising a third party, with relevant skills, to create it) and all be in it.

In a predictable move that isn't particularly dramatic to reveal in a blog, we'll siege on the Friday and do resultant battle at the weekend :)

Sunday @ Assah

Main killboards, alliance creation and forums are in the work atm, along with the first major objectives.

In the meantime, Hans Blix and friends got the kill of the day, which was a very juicily fitted Golem.

http://brianwdesign.com/tswtest/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=4700

Station fights with CVA continued during the day in Assah. Although less outnumbered than on the Saturday (when we nevertheless did undock 30 with local @130, mostly hostile, and get some kills), there were still some dozen or more battleships camping for much of the time. The first mass undock led to them de-aggroing and docking up in station.

Their subsequent undock then led to a hefty fight. Despite being limited to shield transfer in his Chimera, Davinci led the repping and did an excellent job. They quickly dropped a cyno and brought in their own carriers (twice our numbers) and dreadnaughts. During the fight we managed to kill 7 battleships for the loss of 5, though one of our carriers disconnected during the fight and was killed, obviously giving them the victory.

Despite the excellent rep, it is a shame we didn't have our usual big armour logistics in place today - since even brilliant shield repping is tricky against the Amarr-focussed CVA, whose EM
damage tucks wantonly into unresisted shield HP.

Thursday @ Irshah

With our temporary base in Assah, where we have regrouped, there is much potential for some roaming action - which has taken place both towards G-5 (CVA) and Doril (AGGRO).

On Thursday, whilst heading to Doril with a battleship heavy gang, we ran into some interesting action along the way, in Irshah. Having dropped two triage carriers to support a tackled battleship, x13 alliance warped four carriers into our gang, along with their own battleships.

Demonstrating a familiarity with our own tactics, one of the x13 carriers also went into triage, leading to a tug-of-war on the rep. One of our two neuting apocs had logged just prior to the fight but Juki did a fine job in the remaining one to help break the cap on the hostile spider-tank. Finally (after their Navy Megathron made a narrow escape) we managed to kill their triage carrier.

http://brianwdesign.com/tswtest/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=4631

Since time was of the essence, I'd like to particularly single out Poulpe for praise in topping the damage here, followed by Shani, Jack, Rinse, Anubis and Vonchar.

With the triage down, the second carrier quickly went to low armour just as x13 were able to drop a second wave (that included some ten carriers total, and a dread or two). The overwhelming rep on the field now prevented us getting a second carrier kill and eventually our own two triage carriers were trapped, neutralized and eventually killed (though our support escaped).

Had we killed their triage carrier a minute earlier we'd have been 2-2 on carriers killed, and had we killed it a few minutes earlier, we may have killed them faster than they could have jumped in. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable fight against the odds and had the novelty of fighting some of our own favourite tactics.

Opening Salvo

This blog is intended to give people updates and thoughts on our upcoming efforts in Eve. The corporations Fairlight, TSW, B-LT and Shiverau will be with us on this adventure.