Jun 222014
 

Green Gambit was the guest FC for the past weekend’s Ganked roam – Ganked 121: Big Numbers – and from the looks of the killboards, he got you into some fun engagements.  He wrote a few words about the night, and I am copying them below for your perusal.

Taking a break from the usual start points, the fleet gathered in Khanid Prime, with our blinky friends sitting at a safe-spot in Efa. The first big number of the night is the size of the fleet, over 200, and a lot more than I’ve fleet-commanded before.

Almost as soon as we departed scouts reports finding some Gilas in space 5-jumps into null-sec in BX2-ZX. The fleet started making best-speed to Efa as the Gilas were found, engaging some Dominixes in an asteroid belt. More scouts went to support with the bulk of the fleet still around eight jumps out. We’ve travelled little more than another jump, when it’s reported that two Archons have warped into the belt to support the Dominixes. The race is now on to get enough of the fleet into the system to hold the Archons in place…

Meanwhile half a dozen Vexors have setup on the gate in I1Y-IU – I expect them to run as the fleet pours into the system so tell people to ignore them – the Archons are our primary concern.

Unfortunately we’re just a little too slow, and the Archons manage to warp out of the belt. The Vexors are still there, so the rear of the fleet takes out those, and the front of the fleet kills the Gilas. A good start with us already scoring more kills than I expected from quiet Querious.

We regroup in Z-UZZN and the scouts head back on ahead looking for things to kill.

The rest of Querious is, as expected quiet, but the scouts report an INK Tengu/Scimitar fleet sat on a gate on our route in 4-07MU. Sounds up our street, so we jump into them, and the fight is on. Their logi is around 40km away, so that’s our primary. At the point the FC’s internet connection start to play up and he gets disconnected from the game – however plenty of people step-up and call targets during the fight. A huge thanks for that.

We’ve got a lot of battlecruisers in fleet and chasing down the Scimitars is slow progress, meanwhile we’re steadily losing ships. Cosmo drops a can on-grid, 300km from the fight that allows some of the slower ships to bounce into the middle of the fight and we start to make better progress on the Scimis. The fight continues for nearly 20 minutes, with us steadily burning down Scimis, as they slowly take our fleet. It’s a fairly even match and seems like it could go any way until we get down to the last few logistics, we’ve still got enough DPS on the field to explode them, and as the last Scmitar explodes, we catch a handful of Tengus before the rest of them warp off. Only 36 kills.

The remainder of the fleet are scouted back to Khanid Prime, and the fleet reform three jumps away in a Ganked regular location, Agil for part two. We have a bunch of ships left-over from part one, meanwhile everybody else re-ships – mostly into frigates.

We set off for part two around 22:00 with over 100 pilots still in fleet (roughly the same number we started with the first time I ran Ganked) and head down to Keberz and HED-GP. Surprisingly there isn’t much of a camp and what’s there flees. We roam along the Catch-Providence border to T-RPFU, catching a couple of kills on gates as we go.

Our scouts suggest that the activity in southern Providence looks more interesting, so we u-turn and go back into D-GTMI and then FSW-3C. As we’re warping across FSW one of the scouts reports that numbers in local in D-GTMI have increased, and finds a BNI Harpy fleet. We u-turn and warp back to the D-G gate meaning to setup as they jump in. Unfortunately we don’t have time and they start to come into local as we’re in warp. We’re landing at zero, so jump back into D-G to give us time to get setup.

There’s a BNI Flycatcher on-grid so it’s called target immediately, and BI start coming in. Unfortunately BNI have fallen for the general null-sec malaise where they can only win a fight when there’s no opposition. I’m dead and out of the fight before I even cycle my guns on the Flycatcher. However once again other members of the fleet step-up and call targets, and despite BNI’s attempting to head-shot everybody who speaks up, we actually get a semi-decent fight.

Eventually though BNI kill everybody willing to speak-up so I fleet-warp the remainder of the fleet to a planet, and we head back out to HED-GP. Scouts ahead report the route clear, however after a couple of jumps the Harpies are reported chasing us, with their ‘ceptors practically on top of us. We get to HED-GP and the remaining ships pause to kill the ‘ceptors whilst the pods run for safety. As the Harpies jump into system ew warp to the Keberz gate and jump out.

At time of writing we scored 7.63bn ISK dead from 77 kills, so all-in-all it was a pretty good night.

Leshrac86 was also present and he made this video of the roam:

Jul 012013
 

 gankedyr2mk2.png

On the 29th June, the 74th numbered Ganked roam went out to play.  It was lead by top scout & regular Guest FC: Green Gambit, as I would only be able to make it later due to taking part in a Space hangout with Ali Aras – a fellow CSM delegate.  The time I spent with the roam was really great fun, a couple of good fights were had with the Providence holders and their friends.

Anyway, Green sent me his write up of the whole thing, so here it is:

So we’re out on Ganked 72 discussing future roams when I mention the idea of shield-Amarr as a theme. Next thing that’s chosen as the theme for Ganked 74, and I’m guest FC…

Fleet forms up in the regular favourite of Rens, although we don’t see any of the usual docking games. Departing a minute or two past 20:00 the fleet makes best-speed to Irshah where we meet up with the flashies in fleet. Now at full-numbers the 130-strong fleet heads one-jump out into Asabona when we’re informed of a small BC fleet, one jump back in Gomati. We run back to find that they’ve left local, and we have no clue which way they went. We turn around again and head into Curse.

Entry into Curse is quiet so we start heading along the pipe to VOL-MI. Forward scouts call a small gate-camp in CL-85V, so the fleet burns to try and catch something only for the scout to report the camp fleeing, as soon as we start hitting K-Q. Fortunately a Cynabal lands on the CL-85V gate in K-Q at the same time of the fleet, is forced to jump and dies in CL-85. We move on through Curse looping around through XX9 finding people in local, but space quiet. We arrive in H-A and as we’re warping towards the S-E gate, a gang on a gate in EQX is spotted, again the fleet makes haste over, but again the gang flees to station before we arrive. We turn around and head back towards VOL-MI cutting through Scalding Pass. Local009 spots another small gang in VOL-MI heading into ARG. We wait in R-3 hoping to catch them as they come through – however they must have scouted us as they flee, leaving us just with a solitary Stabber to kill.

We get intel on a relatively large Cruiser+BC gang in Providence, so head out of empty Curse and cut through Catch into Providence. Our scouts find them in T-RPFU setup at zero on the gate. This being Ganked, we jump in and open fire. We have slightly more numbers, but they have more BCs whereas we’re mostly cruisers. Add to them a dozen Scythes and they clearly have the upper-hand, but it’s a nice little brawl and we cut through most of the Scythes and net 28 kills overall.

Whelp One over.

Having finished his CSM business, Mangala joined us for round two, and the fleet reformed in Rens. We set off again around 22:45 heading back towards Providence but skirting through a little low-sec first. The fleet kills a random punisher on a gate in low-sec only to discover from the killmail it’s worth 92m ISK! But aside from occasional ships on gates this part of low-sec is quiet, so we soon find ourselves back in Providence.

We wander around Providence mostly missing small things on gates until local009 calls a small gang with Harby and Drake on the D61 gate in Y-MP. We send forward a couple more ceptors to tackle, and the two BCs are pointed. Fleet jumps in and kills both, along with 6 other ships from the gang. This seems to have turned around our luck as we then snag a few things on gates including a Raptor that thinks he can escape by burning away at 3km/s. However our tackle has him locked down and eventually he dies along with his pod. Unusually though Providence is quiet of ratter and miners.

We head further around Providence and venture into VKI then H-G. It’s quiet so we turn around to start moving round towards LF-2. There’s a little confusion about the location of fleet and scouts, and we’re told about a medium-sized gang – just as we jump into it in 3GX. Finding them set up, and ourselves outnumbered, we burn back to the gate and jump back into VKI – we lose a few ships, but most of the fleet make it back. The scouts still in 3GX inform the Provi-defence fleet, that we’ll stand and fight but only if they jump into us.

After a small delay they oblige and local spikes. A rupture is the first thing to decloak and dies almost instantly. We’re shooting other targets when Mang points out their Basilisks have decloaked right in the middle of us, so we switch targets. It takes us a minute to grind through the reps but they both die. We’re now starting to fall fast, but manage to pick-off a couple more ships before we’re done. Another decent fight, whelp two over and time for bed!

I’d like to thank.

  • Local009 for scouting and stepping up to target-call when needed.
  • Major Floor for scouting and bringing some links along
  • Cal Abungu for entertainment on comms
  • The provi-block for bringing two decent fights

 

As with the past 40+ roams, Somer.Blink sponsored some prizes for the roam and the winners are:

  • Navy Slicer: Major Floor, Akori Mitsumoto, Phantom OfKrankor, mikeshaw91 inkura, Dazmaz, Joe Appleby, Ragnar Alestorm, Kitty Baugh
  • Navy Omen: Cal Abunga, Oh’so Scrumptious
  • Navy Harbinger: Local009, Trinneth
  • Navy Apocalypse: sens1
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)