& bring in all your ships.
After a short hiatus due to the recent EVE meet down in London – see TGL3’s blog for more on that – Ganked returned last night. It was both the 40th Ganked, and the first of 3 roams to celebrate RvB’s third birthday. Originally I had planned that the theme would be based on the results of this poll, however Daneel Trevize had suggested a “max dps” theme, were we bring as much gank as possible, and I liked the idea so much that I ran with it.
And what a night it was.
Met up in Rens, had the usual conga shenanigans with a little can flip idiocy thrown in for good measure resulting in Blue Rep members being able to get this kill. Then we were off. Had a speed bump of some Eternal Evocations guys in lowsec, however not all of them went flashy on our broadsword, so we only got a couple of them. After jumping into G-5EN2 we got word of a sizeable Red Alliance Tier 3 gang over in 9-F, however they would not jump into us, and their use of spais – ON THE LEAST SECURE COMMS IN EVE WITH PILOTS WHO DON’T REALLY CARE WHEN WE DIE, JUST HOW (GG RED, GG. All of EVE remembers you when you were good!) – prevented us getting successful cloaky warpins, so we just moved past them and right onto a Black Ops Hot drop performed by Russian Thunder Squad, members of -A-. Our bait vindicator worked wonders. Their blops drop failed amazingly, in that we traded 1 Vindicator – that Green got for free – for a few Black Ops BS.
WIN!
I still do not know what exactly those pilots thought they could achieve. Yes, like 2 managed to escape, but that is only because traffic control caught a few of our tacklers & bubblers. Regardless, at that point it felt really good to be back in the Ganked saddle.
And then we were off again, rolling over a CVA gang that was sat at 0 on a gate, and did not cross jump us even when I and a handful of others killed a sabre of theirs that had cross jumped. By the time I got into ERVK-P, the CVA gang was dead, or had ran away really fast. Except for 1 Lachesis that logged WITH aggression and was probed down and killed by us. God knows how the dumb manage to dress themselves in the morning. Speaking of dumb, we crashed a Legio gate-camp later on which did not warp off despite most likely knowing we were coming, and also being in one of the few systems they live in.
We started to spiral down towards the Catch/Stain border, however while idling in QETZ-W, local started spiking with -A- and their various pets, so we jumped into BUZ-DB, hit the station, killed some stuff, bubbled it and waited. And waited. And waited. And then the drake+scimi fleet they had landed in our bubbles and it was on.
IT WAS GLORIOUS!
House & myself switched calling roles, with Dan and others helping out on warpins when needed & the majority of the fleet focusing on primaries when told, grabbing points and generally not being terrible, which warmed my cold bitter heart. As a group we calmly took down targets as called, or as they presented themselves as new primaries – why hello there Mr Scimitar – without much comms clutter or even your FC doing a good impression of a rabbit caught in headlights. While we did end up dead – around 100 of us were still going by this point – we out performed ourselves massively in terms of how we did in the whelp section of the roam. Overall, I was and still am, very impressed & can happily say that fight really helped me find my love for FCing and EVE once again. Now if only I would undock more.
And then it was 2 AM UK time and it was all over. As the dust settled we had done around 14 billion isk in damage with 130+ kills to our name. Pretty epic night considering I did the whole thing SOBER and that I ran out of smokes around 11 PM UK.
One last word before videos and prizes, however I shall let fleet chat from towards the end of the night say it for me (& my ego):
[ 2012.10.07 00:11:34 ] lolololol01 > we did amazingly well against all those logi lol. was quite suprised
[ 2012.10.07 00:12:08 ] Whisp3r > thx for fleet and fun
[ 2012.10.07 00:12:30 ] Caterpil > Thanks for the fleet :)
[ 2012.10.07 00:12:32 ] macH eoN > cheers guys o7
[ 2012.10.07 00:12:48 ] Alayna Le’line > Thanks guys, fun as usual o7
[ 2012.10.07 00:13:30 ] Shish Tukay > fun night, heading home now, bye guys o/
[ 2012.10.07 00:13:33 ] Geo Vent > I’m off. Thanks for a fun evening Mangala Solaris
[ 2012.10.07 00:13:37 ] Sir Yohnny > GF guys…
[ 2012.10.07 00:13:50 ] Deea Noban > o/ great fleet
[ 2012.10.07 00:13:58 ] Dece Goo’Ba > Excellent Ganked night :-) ttfn!
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:00 ] Rokhaard Indiz > thanks for the fleet everyone
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:02 ] Yori Yolanda > thx for fleet! great fight
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:12 ] mimori > Thanks chaps, was fun.
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:33 ] Morindius > thanks guys, my first Ganked and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:34 ] Thash Isnit > was fun thanks guys!
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:36 ] PVDNS77 > yeah nice ganked. even died \o/ thx for fleet o7
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:47 ] Ohpehk Doshu > great night. thanks RVB
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:51 ] Osoi Shinu > awesome thanks everyone
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:51 ] Himaro 1 > probably the most fun i’ve had on this game in a long time
[ 2012.10.07 00:14:58 ] Andrew Koch > o/ thx for an awesome fleet
[ 2012.10.07 00:15:17 ] Nutbolt > thanks for ganked, was a really good end!
[ 2012.10.07 00:15:22 ] SoraXIII > yeah had a great time guys Mangala Solaris is an epic FC xD
[ 2012.10.07 00:15:24 ] Ganage Be’des > Thanks for the fights!
[ 2012.10.07 00:15:31 ] Solaven > Thanks for the roam guys. great fun.
[ 2012.10.07 00:15:36 ] Janis Praag > great fight fly unsafe!
[ 2012.10.07 00:16:57 ] Stickelback > was that a win lose or draw?
[ 2012.10.07 00:17:09 ] Phantom OfKrankor > it was a good loss
[ 2012.10.07 00:17:35 ] Mangala Solaris > WIN. We exploded, they did too. I didnt rage :D
[ 2012.10.07 00:17:57 ] Strom Crendraven > thanks that was fun!
[ 2012.10.07 00:19:46 ] Kast Agnet > Cheers guys thx 4 everything
[ 2012.10.07 00:20:10 ] Jagtor > cheers mang got to go
[ 2012.10.07 00:21:14 ] Dieter Rams > thanks for the fleet guys
[ 2012.10.07 00:21:17 ] Furious Ginger > fun time guys gtg :D
[ 2012.10.07 00:21:19 ] Dieter Rams > well done
[ 2012.10.07 00:21:37 ] Bazanti d’Arys > Thanks for the Fleet RvB, I had a beautifull death!
[ 2012.10.07 00:21:44 ] Mangala Solaris > glad you came!
[ 2012.10.07 00:21:48 ] Michael Warsaw > Thanks for having me, awesome stuff!
[ 2012.10.07 00:21:53 ] Johnny Vector > that was awesome.
[ 2012.10.07 00:22:14 ] Henry Warsaw > Awesome is an understatement.
[ 2012.10.07 00:24:09 ] Shepherd Riddick > great ganked thx mates
Videos to follow when uploaded
As usual, our friends over at Somer.Blink sponsored prizes and here are the winners:
Scouting Distinction – Buzzard+Probes+Launcher x3 (Sir Yohnny, Captain Hurrdurr, Kaeda Maxwell)
Corpse Collector – Eris x1 (Captain Hurrdurr – for the awesome chain of friendly pods at the end of the night!!!)
Spot Prizes – Federation Navy Comet x6 (SoraXIII, Edvantage – “I CANT SHOOT THEM OR THEM OR THEM OR THEM”, Janis Praag, Rondra Juliaris, Rokhaard Indiz for this – “when fc tells you to take a piss, you ask how high”, Henry Warsaw for this “My first pvp roam. Lets for that guys!”)
Combat Distinction – Cynabal x3 (Green Gambit – for putting that Vindicator on the line so well, BigWierdo, Admiral Rufus – This pair did some great bubbling in the various fights we had)
Combat Excellence – Machariel x1 (Macgyver 3rd – topping the KB kills for the campaign, in the face of hard competition from many including several new comers to Ganked)