Mar 252014
 

Way back in the dawn of time – well 2006 – a forum was setup by a small group of EVE players called Scrapheap Challenge, which was to grow into one of the premier “fan” sites for EVE.

A number of members of this forum, started flying on roams together, roams that often had a theme and only 1 rule, if it is not in fleet – it dies; Eventually these roams grew in to the popular SHC Ganknights, which saw over several years hundreds of pilots attend them, and thousands of kills gained usually at the expense of some null alliance or another.

Then one day, Scrapheap was gone.

And with it the hope of hundreds that Ganknights would continue to happen.

However Failheap Challenge was created very quickly, and Ganknights continued, as nearly as popular as ever, until one day most of a Ganknight fleet found itself wiped out by the Terminus Stream, as a “joke” by its FC (not me by the way). Suddenly, these nights just were not as popular anymore, and attendance dropped off to nearly nothing, although other actions by certain developer parties could be to blame here.

At this point, a former RVB director had an idea that we in RvB would take the Ganknight idea and use it for ourselves, and thus RVB Ganked nights were born. Since our inaugural night back in August 2011, we have run over 100 successful nights that often see fleets of over 150 people, each following the given themes and each getting a silly number of kills, while the fleet has been entertained by itself and the local chats of those we go and visit.

To date we have over 10,000 kills with a value of over 1 trillion isk.  

If you want to be a part of these, then just keep an eye on the channel RvB Ganked in game, or the RvB forums, Failheap, EVE-O and of course my twitter feed.

Oct 022011
 

So, a couple of weeks ago my beloved RVB was two.

We celebrated this with two Ganked nights during September, the first of which was a Thrasher hull night, and which went very very well from start to finish. Seeing what 100 thrasher hulls can do – especially when armed with artillery – is just an amazing thing, like really amazing.

Take a look at the Ganked killboard for a quick overview (Right now this campaign is not displaying correctly, but you can at least see the numbers, until I figure out what is wrong) of the kills we got during Ganked 3: Time On Target.

The second September Ganked was one that took the majority of the attendee’s back to their pvp roots: Rifter hulls!!  And as with Ganked 3 (and indeed any Ganked) it was a great success!!  Fleet was a sight to behold with – again – nearly 100 rifter hulls rolling out to mess up the evening of anyone they came across – and we did it with style, despite 1 smart bombing abaddon, and a group of very determined Scythe Fleet Issue pilots (We love you too Hydra) trying their best to under cut our fun!

However, the main event – and an internal RVB one at that – was one I termed “Sink the Bismarck“. This final birthday event would see a Red Fleet try and guard it’s flagship, the RVBFS Bismarck from Veisto to Oimmo, at opposite ends of the RVB combat area, while the Blue Fleet tried to prevent that.  Battleships, Battlecruisers, and relaxed rules on logistics and electronic counter measures made this a much more interesting prospect than every day RVB and both sides pulled in 70+ members for their respective fleets.

Both fleets surprisingly had formed up on time and the hunt was on, Reds rolling with an excellent scout team, and Blues with Fintarue – who is a scout team all on his own!! (They did have other scouts, however AFKing on a gate does not a scout make). Eventually, Red Fleet got near to Oimmo, and a stand off ensued.  However, it did not last too long as the Red FC made the decision to leeroy into the Blue Fleet who had setup in Vourrassi on the Hageken gate.

The rest is glorious.  Ships burned, logis repped, ECM jammed and carnage happened.

RVB did what it does best.

Happy Birthday RVB.

 

Note: I personally lost 2 battleships, and 2 loaned guardians.  And it was so worth it.