This past weekend saw the 45th RvB Ganked roam.  The theme was fast frigates and was FC’d by Green Gambit, and you can read his report of the roam below:

“So I was a little late on comms – due to real life – at the start of the night, only to find that events had already been hijacked. The fleet was already up, and the first kill of the night was already up on the killboard – a RvB war target killed on the Rens undock. Somebody had also already given the order to move to the first destination, so most of the fleet had already left Rens and were en-route to the low-sec meet-up.

The fleet doing it’s own thing was a theme that continued throughout the evening…

Kast had donated around 70 interceptor hulls, and I spent most of the time until the 21:00 depart time going through the contracts, picking out the scammers and giving away the hulls to the people actually taking part. With most of the fleet already in Bar, myself and the other stragglers departed Rens spot on time.

I arrived on the Irshah gate in Bar, to find a swarm of around 150 fast frigates and interceptors buzzing around, we jumped through and proceeded to Doril – our null-sec entry – being greeted by traffic control and time dilation on every gate jump. As we were jumping into Sendaya, eviliain called point on an Executioner in Doril, and the fleet raced to kill it. Some strange grid-foo meant that half the fleet landed on the Executioner, and half on a different grid. But it died anyway along with the pod.

Scouts then called a small BC gang in Hemin heading towards the Utopia gate. They landed on their gate and jumped as we were jumping in from Doril. Eyes reported them warping to a planet so we gave chase. We caught 3 of them – a Cane, Harby, and Drake – although another Drake escaped just in time, fleeing to a station.

We headed back to the Doril gate, as another gang coming in from low-sec had been reported, however they docked up in Doril, so we started down the Curse pipe. Along the pipe was quiet, with a couple of unguarded bubbles, until the scouts reported a small gang of around 10 frigs/cruisers camping in 8G-MQV. As we jumped into CL-85V the camped dispersed so we crashed the system and warped around hoping to catch something.

After a couple of minutes it was clear they’d ran to a POS, so we re-grouped on the VOL-MI gate. Just as we were gathering a Tengu was reported incoming on the other side, so we setup to catch it. The gate flashed, the Tengu appeared, then cloaked – I’m not sure if this was entirely down to the theme, or just a bit of luck, but it was de-cloaked and pointed it before it warped. Dead Tengu, and pod.

We jumped into VOL-MI and a gang was reported heading our way from ARG-3R. We landed on the gate as their scout in a Dramiel jumped to us. He crashed the gate and we gave chase, only for the entire gang except a single Cane to flee.

A new gang coming from HLW-HP was reported, so we got back into VOL-MI to intercept. They fled to a deep safe leaving us chasing their Cynabal around various gate TACs. After a few failed attempts at landing on him, we gave up and headed towards the Hale constellation.

We buzzed around the Hale constellation for around 15 minutes, mainly trying to tempt the residents to aggress in some shiny ships – only getting a Hound and a Hurricane kill. I called a short bio, docked and went afk. I came back to find the fleet now being commanded by Mangala “honest I’m taking a break from being in charge” Solaris, shooting a Vagabond and hunting a Megathron – both died.

The fleet regrouped on the out-gate of the constellation and the locals resorted to bombers. We caught a couple of Hounds, topping them off with a Skiff on it’s way in, without a scout!

We moved on, skirting around the rest of Curse, seeing very little active in space. We caught a Hurricane in G-G78S – holding it long enough to get 112 pilots on the killmail. Then we tried to bait a group of Tornados sniping off the station in OSY-UD only for them to dock when the lemmings in the fleet spiked local.

As we headed back towards VOL-MI some pilots in-fleet started reporting friendly fire. An examination of the killmails showed that we had some members of Sniggwaffe alliance within the Ganked fleet, were shooting friendlies. They fled as they were kicked from the fleet and so we moved on.

We landed in ARG-3R and chaos descended, with some of the fleet chasing a battleship off a gate – the rest of the fleet engaged some of the kicked Snigg pilots. Somehow the battleship managed to jump through the gate and get away, but some of the Snigg pilots weren’t so lucky.

As we regrouped, a small gang was reported warping across VOL-MI towards K-B2D3, so we gave chase. We caught them on the D87E-A to 0SHT-A gate, and chased them through. Some of the fleet engaged a separate Hurricane off the gate. Meanwhile the rest jumped after the gang, snagging a handful of cruisers, frigates and their pods.

Moving on towards HED-GP, the final destination. We snagged a Test Drake on the HED gate in SV5, then jumped through and snagged another. Scouts called a Scimitar travelling solo along the route behind us, so the fleet went back into SV5 and killed it and a Nulli Secunda Vagabond that appeared.

We crashed back into HED-GP killing a few small things first near the SV5 gate, then on the station un-dock. Test shipped-up and un-docked some battleships and repping carriers. Unlikely to collect any more kills, we fled to a planet whilst our scanners and scouts attempted to lock down a nice target from the large camp on the Keberz gate. A Cynabal obliged by moving away from the gate, and we got a point on it. The fleet warped in – despite being aligned to the wrong gate, and chased down the fast-moving ship. The Cynabal died, and the fleet turned to other nearby shinies. A Stabber Fleet Issue, Jaguar, and Rapier joined the Cynabal, by which point most of the Ganked fleet had been killed.

At this point it was getting quite late, so most pilots called it a night. However a handful decided to take a part-two roam into Providence to see if we could snag a PvE ship…

Entering Providence through the G-5EN2 gate and caught a Brutix on the out-gate to 9-F0B2. Unfortunately he had a lot of friends who jumped through to us. We finished off the Brutix and fled, deciding to find another route into Providence. We went around to Dital, and back into Providence, via KBP7-G. That system was clear and Thecla moved on to scout B-WPLZ. Declaring that system clear we warped to the gate to find an Arazu had arrived, so we attacked. A Drake arrived to support the Arazu as it died. We turned our guns on the Drake as further ships landed. The fleet briefly switched targets to blap a Retribution, then back onto the Drake. Unfortunately the reinforcements were a little too much for us to handle and we were defeated with the Drake in low-shields.”

 

Mangala says:

All in all a really good night.  I had a well deserved rest, my record remains unbroken and lots of explosions were made.

 

In other news, the winners of the Somer.Blink prizes were:

Scouting Distinction – Inty pack (1 crow, 1 stilletto, 1 malediction, 1 taranis) x3 (PVDNS77, Thecla Elarik, Sir Yohnny)

Corpse Collector – Sabre (macgyver 3rd)

Spot Prizes – Firetail x10 (Metaloid, Rando Ary, Mangala Solaris, Uskehan, Christopher Scott, Captain Hurrdurr, Zen Tsai, Wayne Fontes, Khador Vess, Snortle)

Combat Distinction – Cynabal x3 (Daneel Trevize, Mactabilis Maero, Wiiggls)

Combat Excellence – Tempest Fleet Issue x1 (Caterpil)

Heretic – Augoror Navy Issue (Phantom OfKrankor)