Everything But

 EVE, Ganked, RVB  No Responses »
Jul 152012
 

Green Gambit – one of our usual scouts – chose the theme for Ganked 30: Everything But The Kitchen Sink, he also FC’d it, as I was not going to be available (and ended up affected by connection issues so couldnt even fight for RvB in day 3 of the 10th Alliance Tournament).  And luckily he also wrote a few words about the roam:

 

Having had my first attempt at running a RvB Ganked fleet (on Ganked 23) end up a bit of a disaster – at least at finding something to die to – I offered to try another attempt next time RvB Ganked needed a fill-in FC. Mangala asked me to cover July 7th as he didn’t know when RvBs AT-X match would take place.

For the theme the aim was to try and get as many different ship as we possibly could – “everything but the kitchen sink”, and following the previous week’s fun in Delve I decided that heading south again would be the best way to get a decent fight.

So the bulk of our rag-tag fleet assembled in Rens, whilst I had to sit out – due to sec status – in the low-sec starting point of Irshah. The RvB Ganked fleet spent the now-traditional conga time trying to bump the AT-X camera which was positioned outside the trade-hub station. Honourable mention at this point shoud go to Combat Mink who managed out first loss of the night – a Dramiel – to the can-flippers outside station.

At departure time, the fleet made best speed to Irshah where they met up with us flashies and we all proceeded to head towards Curse. Combat Mink, scouting ahead of the fleet called a couple of ships camping Doril – the first jump in null – and whilst a few people jumped ahead they ran into low-sec and got away.

The fleet arrived in Doril to a clear gate and set destination for the middle of Curse. As we aligned to our out – the Jorund gate – evilian scouting the Utopia direction announced a Drake and drag bubble on the Utopia gate. Doing my best impression of Mangala, I warped the entire fleet straight into the bubble, meanwhile the Drake jumped out to Utopia.

The fleet started burning the 100km back to the gate, the first few to jump through the gate announcing that rather than a single Drake, there was an entire fleet of them on the other side. After a bit of further bouncing about the majority of the fleet was on the gate, so we jumped and the battle commenced.

With some very shaky target-calling from myself, we melted fairly quickly through the support of the enemy fleet, and turned to a Tempest which died very quickly. I started calling the Drakes, but it became apparent that they were dying quicker than I was calling targets so left it for everybody to mop up. All in all we got 53 ship kills, most of them with pods too – for 31 losses, mainly people who jumped in advance of the bulk of the fleet or small stuff. A good victory – but then again we did have a 3-1 advantage in numbers. In any case props to Eternal Evocations for giving us a fight and not running after we spiked Doril local.

RvB Ganked battle report

Eternal Evocations battle report

After the fight, we regrouped and moved through Curse, chasing the usual shadows of gate campers who docked at the first sign of us, through to 0SHT, to B-3 in Catch where we had a 10-minute bio-break.

Following the break the fleet started to move further through Catch when one of the scouts called a point on a Tengu at the gate in X4. The fleet made best-haste to kill it, only to find it burning away from the gate at 3km/s – 100MN AB fit – with only a few faster low DPS ships able to keep up with it. Just as it was beginning to look like it was going to take all night to wear it down, somebody managed to get a web on it. More DPS was then brought to bear and both the Tengu and his very expensive pod died.

Revelling from the Tengu kill, we warped to the next system 4N only for a Devoter landed on the gate and jump with us. Immediately called as a target, the Devoter still had enough time to light a Cyno and allow a Thanatos and Armageddon fleet to jump through to us before he died.

It was a little later in the roam than I’d thought – but the expected hot-drop had arrived, by Against All Authorities (-A-).

We immediately started by shooting a Navy Geddon which was one of the first ships to jump through, but as the rest of the -A- fleet jumped through we turned to their Guardians. We steadily burned through all 7 Guardians, then turned back to the Navy Geddon. We got it down to 25% armour, when the reps from the carrier took effect, bringing it back up to 50% armour and increasing – so we looked for squishier targets and started on Canes and Oracles. By the this point we were starting to lose numbers badly, and I was called primary and pretty much insta-popped by the large number of -A- Armageddons on the field. My pod died before I cold clear the bubbles and I woke up back in Rens.

With me down, Major Floor attempted to call targets, but a problem with his mic meant that nobody could hear a thing he was saying. Nobody else remaining on the field stepped up to call targets, so the remaining survivors finished by killing an Arazu then fled the field and headed back to empire.

RvB Ganked battle report

-A- killboard battle report

Part one was over and it was still fairly early – so we decided we’d go out again. It took a little time for the survivors to get back to Rens, but eventually, with around 70 pilots left in the fleet we set off for Providence.

Providence was quiet, we were three jumps in before we even saw another ship. We zig-zagged through the region catching odd ships here and there, but not getting a decent fight from the residents. I’d like to shout out here to Hoarr who briefly took over the fleet whilst I had to take a brief break from the game, and caught a couple of Talos camping a gate in 2V.

We took a bio break in Misaba, during which some of the fleet called it a night with the remnants deciding to head for Catch, as Dotlan and eve-kill indicated activity in that direction. We got as far as SV5 where we found a small gang bouncing around the system. Whilst we were trying to catch them we spotted a Nighthawk running into HED-GP. We chased it and it died, without providing us with a killmail, but not before taking down a couple of our fleet, including myself.

At this point I called it a night and departed to bed. Judging from the RvB Ganked killboard the fleet drifted apart after that getting a few more kills in SV5 and HED.

All in all a good roam, and I’m looking forward to running my next…

 Vidya’s:

 

SOMER BLINK prize-winners (all win an Electronic Attack Frigate):

For jumping after a Drake, finding a fleet of them and dying first: Stingray1971 Jefferson

For pointing a 100MN AB Tengu: Daneel Trevize and Kaeda Maxwell

For running with the spirit of the theme and bringing something nobody else did:

PVDNS77, Athena Thea, and Bunniy (Faction BS)
Nyu Trustan (Ashimmu)
Azula Kishtar (Hookbill)
William Western (battle Wreathe)
tgl3 (Brutix)
Major Floor and Garron Flintex (Keres) 

 

RvB Mowed some LAWN

 EVE, Fail, RVB  1 Response »
Jul 042012
 

Saturday 30th June 2012. 19.15 EVE.  

The glorious RvB AT10 team faced it’s first opponent, the mighty null sec pet alliance, Get Off My Lawn. And RvB thoroughly mowed that LAWN.

 

Del Delvechio RvB CEO was very happy:
Congrats and well done to our AT in their first match yesterday. In case you missed it they by far had the best match of the day, quickly beating GET OFF MY LAWN without suffering any losses. And they had Merlins to boot. Most probably don’t realize how much work goes into getting a good team ready for the Alliance Tournament, suffice it to say its more work than most of us (including me) have time for. So thanks to AT Team Captain and the rest of the team for their hard work and planning and making RvB look like pros on the first day.

Obviously the pilots who flew for RvB in that match had booze fuelled orgies to attend following their win – who knew that flying an internet spaceship makes you attractive to the fairer sex – but I did manage to get some of them say a few words about this victory:

Cablex Dayspring:
The fight was about as clinical as it could have been, everyone performed exactly how we needed to, and our DPS was tearing everything apart in record time whilst our reps were able to keep everyone pretty comfortable!

Yankunytjatjara
I’d say it was enemy fault more than our merit, what with them warping their scimi in at 20 and getting fixated on overheating invuln merlins ;) but yep we didn’t do any serious fuckup and the two factors combined got us the match.

Dracoth Simertet
GO GO RVB!!!!!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!

While the pilots were obviously very happy with their win, the reaction of RvB members and our supporters was much more raucous.  Of the 15 channels I was in that evening, 14 had lots of cheering and chatter about the fight. The last one was the EUNI public channel. Go figure.  Here is a selection of the reactions – excuse the language:

 

Kast Agnet > omg sheer rapage. VWD rvb
Mintax > woot! nice work
Arctius > omg brutalized
Selon Nivek > wow, that was quick!!
Treides Darkstar > whoops i somer blinked and missed it

 

Federal Criminal > that was epic
General Escobar > good job RvB
roigon > rvb went for the scimi, killed the scimi.  gg rvb
Krytan Reborn > ANNIHILLATED
nu11byt3 > welp, that was over before it started

 

Mr John22ta > wow that scimi melted
Mortvvs > rvb best b
Grarr Dexx > what the christ
Grarr Dexx > happened
ry ry > faceraped

 

===================================

 

This emphatic victory is not however the end of this campaign for RvB, after much deliberation and figuring out of their own rules, CCP finally published the schedule for the second round of qualifiers and RvB’s second match in AT10, will be against:

Suddenly Spaceships on Sunday 8th July at 18.20 EVE.

I trust everyone will be watching and cheering RvB on once again, having the support of all 4000 of you and the many thousands outside RvB who are supporting us, means a tremendous amount to those who do get selected to fly.

NB: A few people asked why I was not flying on Saturday, and it was not that I was not asked to its just that I messed up a touch.  I figured that since there was a long delay on Saturday I could move a ship around for later, and when the time came to be in fleet and moved by CCP, I was not close to our space to either plug in implants or get a ship ready! So I threw away an opportunity for glory all because CCP caught up with themselves during the break before our match!  I did however get to shoot LAWN later on that evening, so all was not lost.

Small, yet perfectly formed

 Fail, Fcing, Ganked  No Responses »
Jul 032012
 

Totally late, but at least I got round to finishing it – however short it may be.

Anyway, few weeks ago, Ganked 28: TEETOO rolled on out into the cold unforgiving reaches of New Eden.  The theme for the night was Frigate hulls, but only if there was a T2 variant of said hull – and yes people could bring the T2 if they so wanted.

We departed from Agil – as I fancied going Querious, Delve, and Period Basis.  I did not know up front that the CFC/Honey-badgers had started to move in already.  Passing through northern Querious we killed yet more fail bombers, turns out CVA doesn’t have the franchise on these! Eventually we ended up in 319-3d, a couple of weeks before the rest of New Eden dog-piled in, where we shot a few dude’s who just kept being bad around us while we were on a bio.

We moved onwards again towards Period Basis shortly after the break taking down some retarded HUN pilots who fail at smart-bombing along the way, following which some TEST bro’s who fly with us on occasion got in touch and let us know they too had a frig heavy gang rolling around and I said come at me bro.  Just before they did, we found this, and killed it. TEST then failed to jump in, instead NULLI jumped in and we shot some things, with TEST dribbling in instead and we shot them too until eventually NULLI’s inability to want to fight without logistics overcame our fragile frigate hulls. 

After a short regroup break, our valiant group headed out again.  I scouted us into Querious and caught some more fail locals.  We slowly bimbled around passing 1DH- without the TEST swarm even knowing we where there, until Kalaratiri jumped into Y-2ANO in Fountain and found a gatecamp waiting for us – that he found it as a result of the blowing him up is another issue entirely. What followed was a brilliant fight with plenty of explosions and tons of good fights offered in local. I was hero-tackling expensive toys and went down keeping a lachesis pinned, so Daneel took over and did a bang up job of keeping the guys fighting as we kept going in order to win us the ISK war.  He firmly did that!  Kudos must go out to the Aurora Shadow guys who fought us and did so in an “honourable” way, ie no logistics! 

All in all it was yet another good night, and we all made mention of the fact that frig nights or cruiser nights seem to be the best times we have, people are much more willing to fight us…

Vidya Footage

Ranek Auscent made this:

 

As usual, the wonderful folks over at Somer.Blink – who are celebrating their 250 TRILLION ISK milestone – sponsored several prizes for the evening.

Scouting Distinction – 1x Stilletto, 1x Crow, 1x Taranis, 1x Malediction (Kalaratiri, Green Gambit, Lady Irradiance)

Corpse Collector – Eris (Nicola Abre-Kai)

Spot Prizes – Sentinel (Dracoth Simertet, Luscius Uta, Edward Tivruskii, sens1, SMM Scotland1993, Scyleth, ABrownie, Bernadette Kasenumi, Solivan Dallocort, lolololol01)

Combat Distinction – Arazu (Certissian, Hackbert, Major Trant, Nutjob O’Crazy, Velox Versutus)

Combat Excellence – Sleipnir (Luckyccs) Awarded pretty much because on his way home after our first whelp he blitzed 3 guys who were trying to end him.  

Heretic – 50 Tormentors, 50 Navitas, 50 Bantams, 50 Probes (Y’talana Ktra’a)

Thukk You, Frill Me

 EVE, Ganked, RVB  1 Response »
Jul 022012
 

TYFMbanner

 

I’ll let Seismic Stan’s words speak for me as to what this is all about:

Like a gentle echo of last year’s acrimony, capsuleers have once again been voicing their dissent at changes brought about by the latest expansion. This time it is the removal of the Vagabond’s “frill”. Chief amongst those protesting is Rixx Javix of Eveoganda notoriety, but there has also been much chatter in Tweetfleet, on the forums and elsewhere. It seems that finding something to rage about is fast becoming a Summer tradition in New Eden, but this time there’s a distinctly more festival feel about things.

That’s not to say there isn’t a point to be made. It would be a magnificent showing of player solidarity if we could get a bit of a crowd together to tub-thump about the needless circumcision of the Vagabond, but equally to celebrate EVE and its communities, and also to remember that 20% of CCP staff lost their jobs as a result of last Summer’s mistakes. Whatever axe you’ve got to grind, bring it along, I’m sure we can blow something up in its honour.

As a result of this unannounced change to the Vagabond, there will be a “protest march” of sorts featuring the Vagabond (Does High Sierra still offer them for free?!) and its cousins the Stabber & Stabber Fleet Issue taking place on Sunday 15th July 2012 from 18.00 EVE time onwards; and I have been approached to use my organisational hutzpah to put some violence together during and after this march. Basically, the “protest march” will turn into Ganked: No Frills Edition (+1 internets to anyone who gets the reference).

Here is the timetable for the evening:

1800 ‘My Loot, Your Tears’ Prize Suicide Gank in Jatate
1900 General Stabber/Vagabond muster to form the “Frill Me” fleet at Jita Memorial to flash our knickers at the AT10 camera.
1929 “Thukk You” Outlaw/?RvB fleet enters Jita, performs monument alphastrike flyby. Pinata self-destructed.
1930“Thukk You, Frill Me!” combined fleet departs Jita on Protest March
2000 Rendez-vous with remaining outlaws in low-sec
2100 Fleet arrives in M-MD3B to deliver a sternly-worded letter of complaint to the Thukker Mix CEO.
2101+ Tea & Biscuits/Death or Glory

The “Outlaw/RvB” Fleet is basically the Ganked: No Frills fleet – along with anyone else who wants in to this evening too.  We will meet up in New Caldari (Most of us will anyway) and enter Jita when planned.  Following this we will race to Akora to meet the flashy members of the group and then head on down to M-MD3B in the Great Wildlands via N-RAEL.  After a short “protest” at the Thukker HQ, we will move off and go roaming in our No Frills fleet of greatness.  

As per normal if you cannot fly a stabber hull fly something useful – tackle/bubbles especially.

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!

Once more into the Breach(er)

 EVE, Ganked, RVB  3 Responses »
May 262012
 

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger”

 

Saturday 19th May was the 26th Ganked roam, and was also guest FC’d by Azual Skoll, the author of the eve altruist blog and ex director of Agony Unleashed.  For the nights theme  Azual had chosen the lowly breacher as our vessel of choice. 

After getting some emergency supplies of breachers freightered to Rens, we formed up and moved out pretty much on time – obviously Azual learned this from his time in Agony as I am sure on my nights we never leave on time! It turned out, that our destination for the evening was to be Providence.  Before we had even jumped in to nullsec, we came across (yet another) smartbomb fit battleship that tried to take out brave band of pilots down, we are so used to them trying this, that we know to kill them from range.  So we did.

 

 

 

We had just jumped into Providence, un molested as ever, when a scout mentioned a cyno and suddenly Azual began acting funny, so much so that he WARPED US TO IT!  However unlike when I do that, most of the roam survived, and some bad guys died. Obviously, I lost my first hound here as I was so not paying attention.

While I was reshipping, the roam killed a few more duders, including this really expensive pod. I was soooo jelly. Anyway, we bounced around RP space demonstrating the power of the Breacher, killed yet another smartbomb fit battleship – plus his buddies – and generally wrought a path of terror with a hull people just did not expect. However it was not to last, it seems Azual’s earlier channeling of my spirit never really left him.  He found another cyno at another pos, however this time it cost us everything! 

However, while some may see this as a low point we had been roaming for several hours, taking names and generally having a ball in our lowly frigate hulls.  Thanks again Azual Skoll!!

Once again, the amazing folks over at Somer.Blink – who by the way are currently celebrating the 200 TRILLION isk mark & will be sponsoring the RvB team in the 10th Alliance Tournament – provided prizes for the roam.

Scouting Distinction – Cheetah, Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher & 10 Sisters Combat probes per award. (Glepp, Judontknowme, Tigran Petrosian)

Corpse Collector – Sabre. (Akjon Ferguson – whored his way onto 15 pod mails)

Spot Prizes – 10 Hounds. (SubRazor, Rexorr, Captain Fantastiic, Shish Tukay, MaximusDog, Fewell, Ethersapien, Seismic Stan, Miccio Kaku, The Howch)

Combat Distinction – Scythe Fleet Issue. Max of five. (Mizuka Asakura, Vora Dumem, House2twist, Phantom OfKrankor, Blasharga)

Combat Excellence – Sacrilege. (Mactabilis Maero)

Best Local Spam in Elizabethan – 1000 Breachers. (Khador Vess)

Apricot, Blueberry, Grape, Strawberry

 Fcing, Ganked, RVB  1 Response »
May 072012
 

ECM.  

Who knew it could be so much tasty, sticky fun.

Ganked knows of course.

Around 110 pilots attended Ganked 25: Jammin’ which conveniently was held on the same day that EVE turned 9 years old. Even better was at least 90% of the fleet was utilising ECM of some sort, be it jammer modules on a bonused hull, ecm drones or in my case boosting the ecm strength of the fleet as a whole. Such a uniformity of purpose made kill mails look so amazing. The size and composition of the fleet did mean we had a very hard time getting fights, but we did manage to roll over a couple of unsuspecting groups, mainly consisting of drakes and scimitars. Best encounter was a fight up in Geminate with the Goons, who valiantly nanoed their drakes around while we used our scouts and fast tackle to great effect to get warpins on their logistics, slowly but surely we got them down, for losses of “cheap” ecm platforms on our end.  Good fight Goons!

A few of us – after many realised it was late and we had done around 80 jumps so far – reformed in Rens and plowed through some Providence locals before trying to provoke a fight in HED-GP. Where, surprisingly no one would even talk to us in local, and we only had 30 or so at that point, mostly frigs and ecm cruisers, with a few BC and 1 Scorpion thrown in. If I was the locals I would have fought my fleet, as surely a fight is better than spinning (meat or ship, exclude as appropriate)?

Thats the up and down of Ganked I suppose, either way the night was really really fun, ESPECIALLY for Kalaratiri, a Ganked regular who turned 19 on Saturday, and as a result found himself enriched via the generosity of his fellow Ganked pilots.

 

Special shout-out goes to myself, for totally raging at the fleet before the encounter with Solar Fleet drakes. Long story short, those ECM drones I demanded pulled in before I fleet warped us, were mine. I am the best.

 

Vidya Flavour Jams by Geddonz & Jaymes Welty

 

As with Ganked 24, the wonderful boys and girls over at Somer.Blink sponsored several prizes last night, and without any fanfare here is the list of winners!  Congratulations to you all!

Scouting Distinction – Buzzard, Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher & 10 Sisters Combat probes per award. Max of three. (Jamie Banks, Green Gambit, Thecla Elarik)

Corpse Collector – Flycatcher. (PVDNS77 with 17 pod mails!) This is the same as last weeks highest scoring pod whorer!

Spot Prizes – 10 Kitsunes. (Codename Par, Damien Smith, Dragon Venom, Canidy, xXThe EntityXx, Klapen, Raubrey, Tiaggo, Klown Walk, Sativa Divipwnum)

Combat Distinction – Rooks. Max of five. (Luckyccs, Angelus Infirim, Tigran Petrosian, Xinnax, macgyver 3rd)

Combat Excellence – Scorpion Navy Issue. (Nyu Trustan) For trying so hard to let me lose your Scorpion!!!

Heretic – Falcon. Most killmails with a non-ECM bonused ship. (PVDNS77)

Yes PV being the whore he is, managed to bag two prizes!!!!  Thats some dedication! You too can be that dedicated guys just by attending future Gankeds! And guys, if you are yet to try Somer.Blink, remember if you join today using the promo code “Ganked” then you will receive bacon – not really, but you will get 2.5million isk blink credit!

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