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)