Weekend Review 7/15

It was quite a weekend for me in Eve. I was lucky enough to have the Alliance Tournament, Thukk You Frill Me & the corresponding Ganked roam, and my cyno alt finished up the necessary pre-reqs all at the same time. Let's kick it off with the AT.

The group stages in the Alliance Tournament were pretty spectacular. Both of my teams drew a bit of attention. The buzz surrounding RvB was mostly in regard to their comeback win over Rote Kappelle in the boundary violation match, which the Robo-Blogger has of course already covered. The more interesting match was Pandemic Legion vs Rote (Congrats Rote for stirring up some good fights this weekend, by the way). PL dressed to the nines, bringing out their flagship Bhaalgorn and four Malices, which were Alliance Tournament prizes from previous years. If you haven't seen the match yet, watch Michael Bolton III squeal like a little girl here:

I'm still not quite sure how the second PL Bhaalgorn went down so quickly. The Guardian wasn't jammed or neuted from what I could see, and the reps never really kept up. After that, Rote was able to pick off a couple Vengeances and the Guardian, and they took a relatively close match. I was pretty impressed with the PL pilots keeping all of the Malices alive, but that's the only real positive for them here. It was a great fight to watch, but you've got to give it to Rote for not only winning the match but kicking ass in the isk war. I'm surprised the Pandemic Legion fit wasn't able to do more with the ridiculously awesome ships they had on the field.

All while this was happening, Thukk You Frill Me was forming up and rolling out. For the unaware, this is the campaign headed by Rixx Javix and Seismic Stan to bring the Frill back to the Vagabond. The event started in Jita with an official protest by shooting the infamous memorial there. I couldn't make it to this part since my security status was just a bit too low, so I waited patiently in lowsec while the gang moved towards me. 

The Ganked roam featured Stabber hulls in honor of the Vagabond's frill. Personally, I grabbed a Stiletto, as we were a bit light on tackle with no Dictors in fleet, and there's no better way to whore on killmails than a fast locking interceptor ;-).  This was one of the slower Ganked nights I've been on. It took quite a while to get someone interested in fighting us, and we were a bit distracted by the great AT matches wrapping up the evening. Eventually, AAA decided to ~undock~ and fight us. It was a pretty decent fight, finally. I'd say the highlight was knocking down a Loki, since it was a bit pimped out. Perhaps most surprising is that I survived! When I started taking some damage, I burned out of the bubble and managed to warp off before anyone got point on me or managed to take me down. I even made it all the way home! Mangala formally apologized for this obvious flaw in the roam, as he promised that we would all die.

Speaking of Ganked, next week's is RvB's year anniversary of hosting them. The theme should be up soon, but I invite everyone to come. They're open to the public, and they're a blast. The fleets are disorganized, drunken messes, and they're fantastic. Also, I'm sure Mangala has something up his sleeve for this one. Don't miss out.

RvB Ganked 27: Kotuku

Ganked night is a tradition in RvB that takes a themed fleet out to nullsec and pretty much welps it into anything it can find. Despite being in RvB for the better part of a year now, I've managed to not make it out to a single one until today. I'm not going to make that mistake again. These fleets are awesome (and open to the public!).

The theme for Ganked 27 was missile ships in honor of the new launcher and missile effects on Tranquility. The fleet had tons of different ships: Drakes, Caracals, bombers of all types, and even a Raven or two. The fleet was over 80 strong to start. Personally, I decided to go with a typical nano Drake. I know that seems pretty boring, but I've actually never really flown them. Plus, what could be more appropriate for a missile themed roam? Here's the fit:

[Drake, Nano Drake]

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Small Energy Neutralizer II

Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor II
Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I


Warrior II x5


The Ganked roams kick off from Rens, so I grabbed a fresh jump clone from Dodixie and fit my Drake. We set out through Great Wildlands. That entire region was pretty dead, but it was good to get new guys used to the large fleet movements. Next we headed into Curse. Not surprisingly it was a bit more active. A fairly large gang from Raiden kept after us. They first gave us a go by cynoing in from a Devoter. In came a Damnation, more Devoters, and a metric ton of Abbadons. Most of the gang was able to burn out, and we managed to get the initial cyno Devoter. I'm not sure how many we lost on the engagement. The Raiden gang followed us for a couple more jumps, but there was a similar result. I'm sure we lost a few, but we took out another Devoter. Most of the gang was able to burn out though.

At that point, we ran off towards a lowsec system for a quick break. We took 45 minutes off and formed up to hit it again. Numbers were still over 90 pilots for the second go. The gang snagged a Tornado on our way out towards Providence. A poor Hawk also jumped into the gang once we were in Providence, but I wasn't nearly quick enough to get on that mail.

As we pushed into CVA space, we found a small fleet of ratting ships. The fleet managed to snag an Apocalypse kill worth about 500M isk. A little faction pimped for a standard Apoc, huh? The interesting thing is that I actually flew for the same corp about a year ago when I was still a big carebear. Crazy how times have changed for me over the past year.

On the third leg of the trip, we set our eventual destination for HED-GP. At this point, I'd been missing out on a lot of kills because a Drake takes too darn long to lock and we had a lot of DPS still. Remind me to pack a SeBo for the next one. Anyway, the fleet size was still around 60+ pilots, which is great. We picked up some kills en route & made it to HED safely. Finally we drew the attention of a well-organized AAA gang. There were a couple of Machariels, some Cynabals, a ton of BCs, HICs and 4-6 Scimitars. Somehow I managed to get myself primaried and podded pretty quick. I didn't mind too much as it had been quite a long day of roaming, but I would have liked to kill something before I went down.

It was an awesome day all around though. Special thanks to Mangala for getting it together. Also, thanks has to go out to everyone in fleet for the great work all day, both in fighting and in the spectacular local spam, ranging from facts about the Queen of England to some softcore porn. I'll be seeing you at future Ganked events.

Gentlemen, The Queen.