Today is the day

 EVE, RVB  1 Response »
Jun 302012
 

Pilots of RvB.

Your comrades in arms are about to embark upon a great crusade, toward which they have striven these many months. The eyes of New Eden are upon them all. The hopes and prayers of pew-pew loving people everywhere march with them. In company with their brothers in arms from both Red & Blue, they will bring about the destruction of the LAWN war machine, the elimination of Pandemic tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Tranquility, and security for ourselves in a free world.

Their task will not be an easy one. Their enemies are well trained, well equipped and battle hardened, they will fight savagely.

But this is the year 2012! Much has happened since the Pandemic triumphs of earlier years. CCP have inflicted upon HydraBreak great defeats, in open battle, post to post. Our home fronts have given our comrades who fly out today an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war thanks to numerous large donations – several of which were over 1 billion isk, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men further supported by the generosity of Somer.Blink. The tide has turned! The free pvper’s of the world are marching together to victory!

I have full confidence in the courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle of all the pilots we are committing to the crusade to win the 10th Alliance Tournament.

We will accept nothing less than full victory!

Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

Give peace a chance

 Ganked, RVB  No Responses »
Jun 102012
 

Red & Blue are such a friendly bunch, that at the request of CCP Punkturis – and various others folks including CSM member Seleene – we dropped the war against each other for 24 hours.  This was done to rectify the War Report statistics and to allow Red’s to declare war on Blue, allowing Punkturis OCD to be sated. 

However, this did leave thousands of pilots at a loose end. And you never want an army of blood thirsty killers just hanging around, their minds will soon wander to women and plunder.

As a consequence of this, I decided I would take some of them out on an impromptu Ganked, and so Ganked: War, What is it good for? took place on Tuesday 5th June, with a goodly number of drunk British pilots showing up, since they were all off work due to continuing celebrations for the Diamond Jubilee. I settled on frigs and cruisers as the theme for the day, with Reisen being the jump off point for everyone, handy for RvB space as well so more people would be able to die along side me.

Since it was yet another bank holiday in the UK, we formed up not long after down time and rolled out.  We meandered through Etherium Reach and the Kalevala Expanse seeing very little in the way of targets – obviously not many Brits live in the drone lands – although we did get a couple of Black Legion kills along the way. And then all of a sudden we were in Geminate, home of the wonderful Brick Squad. However except a few small scuffles we really did not get a fight out of them, although we did kill former Ganked attendee Bei Artjay a couple of times – apparently causing him to rage a little as he is trying to avoid awful losses to gain a place in Brick’s AT team this year – as well as the usual fail bombers, and some ROL pilots that tried to take us on. All that action made me hungry so we took a break, a well deserved one as I was feeling the beer already!

About 90 minutes later we reformed and picked up even more numbers – lots of Euro pilots getting home by the time we rolled again – and after a couple of jumps into low-sec, we came across a Brosef’s gang of Cynabals, Scimitars and some random hulls. Apparently they had formed up to chase another smaller, purple RvB gang led by Tiaggo, which had merged into the Ganked blob…  Thing’s did not go very well for the Brosef’s gang at all. They went blinky on a fleet member’s tier 3 BC hull, did not seem to get reps from their own scimitars, and had a fleet member in a Munnin whoring all their mails as they died.  Was a pretty fun fight to say that as ever were disorganised and lackadaisical as low-sec is normally quiet.

We continued on and scouts reported a gang in PX- in Etherium Reach, so we piled on in, caught what we could and killed things.  Was fun to fight people even more bad than we are, just sucks that we caught so few, when there was many more on the gate (even my bubble did not help).  They even got reinforcements, but they never jumped in, so we moved onwards until we got word of a Tier 3 gang in 74- and after a while they ended up right on a gate so we jumped in and had a bloody good fight with them, got a few kills, lost a few dudes and then held the field. It was after this that we had word of a large SOLAR gang nearby, which by the time we had solid info had jumped in and out and in and out, but never once tried to find us. So we turned around popped back to high-sec – rolling over another Fidelas gang as we did so – as we needed to reship our losses, and get more beers.

The night gets a bit blurry for me at this stage, I know there was other kills in low-sec including one of a 3rd party war target who was just dumb and some EWOKS as well; and I do know that there was lots of drunk talk about using bait navy megas to get fights, however I know we ended up in the north being killed by NCDOT in one of their usual displays of teen angst and pubescent rage.

All in all it was a great day, lots of new faces came along with us and really got into the spirit of Ganked. Nearly 80 kills totalling nearly 7billion ISK and lots of wrecks left behind us. SUCCESS.

And as it turned out, Blue redecced Red, and Punkturis OCD will just have to deal.

And luckily, Ranek Auscent was on hand to record it – when he remembered to hit record:

Turns out, Dece Goo’ba from RvB also made a recording:

Gentleman, The Queen.

 Fail, Fcing, Ganked, RVB  No Responses »
Jun 072012
 

The recent weekend back in the “real world” saw the Diamond Jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth the Second, and to mark the event Ganked 27: Kotuku was held – kotuku being her majesty’s title in Maori.  The theme for the evening was missile boats, due to the Inferno update which saw missile graphics improved to the highest levels of awesomeness!

We formed up in Rens in the mid afternoon – what with my plan being a slow wander South by South East – and of course, had the usual messed up conga before we headed out in to the wild blue yonder.  Our first null-sec stop was 7Q- in Great Wildlands and on our arrival we began to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee in local, mostly because there was no one to explode. Something which proved to not change at all as we passed through empty system after empty system, until one of our scouts informed us of some form of shiny in 7-I.  Suddenly we went pro and had a prober race to the system, meanwhile another scout got eyes in G-0 in Curse, of a possible fight between some dudes that we may be able to crash. Turned out RaidenDOT (who are not dead yet) and Initiative Mercenaries were doing “something” in that system, so we ran over – promptly scaring the shiny in 7-I away – and camped the G-0 gate in KLMT-W instead.  Now its pretty possible those groups were working together as suddenly some ‘Nados appeared on the other side of the gate, however they soon went away and Abaddons un-docked to take their place…

This was when we decided we would rather live than whelp so early into the roam, and started burning off, not before we took down a few devoters that tried to catch out gang – we did lose a few ships but not as many had we stood and fought, and after being chased for a while we moved from Curse into Scalding Pass, were we came across more gangs, which didnt help us at all as we kept getting split up.  Eventually, after getting over the shock of how busy Curse and Scalding have become, I ordered us to reform in Sendaya. Funnily enough some 60 ships had survived whatever the hell Curse had become, so I was pretty happy.

Part One was over.  It could have been done much better on my part, but the prospect of massive whelps early on just isnt something I get off on, I much prefer some foreplay first, followed by a nice long sweaty session full of explosions.

Following some reships and what not we moved out from Sendaya, with Providence as our target this time.  We ran over a flashy Tornado on the way, however when we hit Providence the region seemed to be doing a good impression of Great Wildlands. NO ONE WAS ACTIVE. Until we found a couple of ratters in VKI- and used magicks to find them, and kill them. Provi after that was a tad quiet – again – and we had to resort to running down to HED-GP in Catch to find a fight. We killed a Rapier, pilot got mad and brought a bunch of stuff to kill us. We killed some more and then we either died or ran away, I forget as I did actually die as I was sat on their warp in…

Part two had ended. Was generally disappointed in Providence, as usually the locals find their balls and fight us, but even their bombers were failing this week…

Eventually a 3rd roam went out – it pretty late and we had been going for hours by this point so we had few pilots with us – and we headed up through Great Wildlands towards the North, however we did not see much until we arrived in N-RAEL, where we killed some shinies, decided we were too tired and drunk (THE QUEEN!) to go on, therefore after some glorious op success we gave up and called it a night.  All in all a really fun day was had by all.  

*Note on “The Queen”, this is basically a toast and when someone says “The Queen” you repeat it and take a drink. I think over the series of roams “The Queen” was said at least 50 times…  

Geddonz was back from Cuba and vidya’d for us:

 

As usual Somer.Blink sponsored several prizes for the night:

Scouting Distinction – Launcher + Probes + 1 crow (Max 3) (Josh Lebanoni, BBsoerjabi, Jamie Banks)

Corpse Collector – Flycatcher + Manticore (Nyu Trustan)

Spot Prizes – Caldari Navy Hookbills (luckyccs, Combat Mink, Nyu Trustan, Kuhal Dalan, Gribbly Lazair, Beanhead2, Uclanchar, Jedi Master06, Jason Bouryne, Mourning Souls, Nyquist Dispute, Jenny Marcus)

Combat Distinction – Osprey Navy Issue (Max 5) (Canidy, Scyleth, Daneel Trevize, Krytan Reborn, Green Gambit)

Combat Excellence – CNR or a Fleet Phoon (This is up to Blink) (Nicola Abre-Kai)

Heretic (lol I cant use missiles) – Keres (Yanni39)

Best local spam relating to HM Queen – Caracal Navy Issue (macH eoN)

RvB is going to Jove space

 EVE, RVB  No Responses »
Jun 062012
 

 

You all know what RvB is about, you know what we try to achieve every minute that the server is online, for those that do not, basically we want to explode merlins and rifters all day long! And speaking of explosions, every year alliances from all over EVE, big or small, null/low/empire based are given the chance to prove they have the skill to kill, in the pinnacle of explosions in EVE Online known as the Alliance Tournament, an in game competition hosted by CCP with prizes also provided by CCP, and streamed live to viewers all over the world!

 

The EVE Online Alliance Tournament is the ultimate battlefield in which the top pilots in EVE Online fight for the glory and honour of their alliance. 64 Alliances compete over 4 weekends of intense, explosive action.

 

And for the 10th AT, RvB has been drawn as one of the contenders in the 10th Alliance Tournament. However, this is not the first time Red & Blue have entered the AT, last year we also entered and had a damn good showing in the opinion of those who hold the AT dear. Blue had a hard opener being drawn against Outbreak – eventual Finalists, and Red ended up 1 kill shy of advancing to the Finals weekend, but all the same RvB got it’s name and identity out there in one of the best ways you can in EVE.

This year RvB has been allowed to fly as “Purple”, which means pilots from both Red & Blue will be flying in our team, this is all because of the shenanigans that last years 1st and 2nd place winners got up to in the form of meta-gaming the Final, shenanigans I will not go into in this post. RvB having the option to fly under our “purple” state basically means that we have a larger pool of experienced pilots to draw from, giving us a much better chance at taking home the prizes on offer this year.

So down to the nitty gritty of why everyone is here – the prizes. This year the tournament is sponsored by the Caldari State who has spared no expense in creating two extremely powerful and versatile ships in their class. These ships will be based on the Osprey and Merlin hulls.

The Osprey hull is Etana. The name is drawn from the same branch of mythology as the Gallente Ishtar and the AT8 Utu, and has a nice connotation with some ancient Caldari-Gallente history involving Caldari Prime. This variant, which is the first prize, is a pioneering logistics ship with the added capacity to fit a covert ops cloak along with some very powerful skill bonuses.

The Merlin hull is Cambion. The name comes from a half-demonic entity which ties in nicely in with the description of a crazy, fiery rocket brawler with mad overheating bonuses plus it’s believed that the Merlin of wizard fame was either a cambion or descended from one.

I know by now, those of you still reading will be wondering “How do I get in on this?”, and while I and RvB as a whole salute your enthusiasm, we already have a pool of experienced, bloodthirsty and Tech 1 capable pilots ready to roll for our matches and show the rest of EVE that we know how to make their merlin’s & rifter’s explode!  However, should you still be with us come the next Alliance Tournament, then you may just get a tap on the shoulder and be offered a chance to represent us, so don’t go away now!

Others may be asking “How can I show my support?”, and to those who are I say you can do this in many ways:

1) WATCH ALL THE MATCHES as they happen and cheer RvB on in both our public channel and the RvB Community channel!
RvB’s first match is set for 30th June @ 19.00 EVE versus the mighty “Get off my Lawn”

2) Add the words “RvB – Alliance Tournament 10 – We will rock you” to your bio’s. I will be checking!

3) Donate to your corp wallet, every little helps our campaign, and generosity is its own reward.
Please add the reason “AT X” as the comment.

4) Keep exploding each other, its what we do and we do it well!

In other news, RvB’s At 10 campaign has been part funded via sponsorship from Somer.Blink, so take some time to enjoy their lotteries!

And folks, if you like a flutter, BIG Games will be running the main betting site for AT10 as they have in the past, so check out http://at10.big-eve.com/default.aspx and maybe throw a few iskies on RvB!

I will be updating this thread at regular intervals both before and after matches, so keep checking back. Feel free to ask any questions you may have here and I shall endeavour to answer them to the best of my ability. If any outside parties come to you with questions, please direct them to me, do not go answering them yourselves.

 

TL;DR: RvB has an opportunity to expand our profile by doing what we do best and I hope you all will be there to support the “purpleness of our cause” throughout Alliance Tournament 10!