December 29, 2010

Holidays&Finals&Catch&Fountain&SnipeHacs

As I logged into blogger today I realized that my last post was over 2 weeks ago.

Pretty sad I know.

Finals kicked my ass. Christmas fed it.

I'm back now, and will try and post like I used to.

The past few nights involved snipe hac gangs for the most part. Alliance participation early USTZ has been piss poor, as such we haven't been able to match NC numbers in Fountain for timers. Last night J5A and PNQ TCU timers came out... and I got crap numbers in fleet. I disbanded after an hour of begging for pilots, and sent them to fly with a bomber gang that was up. Goons had around 250, WI had 50 and I wasn't going to suicide on them.

Later that evening Cardking and I took out our posted snipe hac op. Easley barely made it, but together he and I scouted and grabbed targets on our way up through Cloud Ring and into Pure Blind. We got our CEO, Avicenna, to join fleet. It was an historic occasion (Avi hasn't been on a roam with us for months). We got him to pod to 6VDT and shit fit a Vengeance to fly with us. Market in 6VDT is horribad... his Vengeance had point no guns... and not tank... FIT HERE

First kills came on a jump in to a bubble camp in J5A, on our in gate. They had no scout on the gate they were camping. They were lucky we only snagged this Hurricane and Stabber-the rest managed to bail out.

We moved on into Cloud Ring. Our scout died one jump ahead of us in a drag bubble to a cloaky Goon camp. The Goons were extremely proud of their interceptor kill and spammed local from their cloaky safe spots. We congratulated them on their great success.

In 9-4RP2 Easley found a Drake sitting on station. He aggressed... Drake aggressed back! In jumped the HACs and the Drake went pop! Either his buddies next door didn't report us or he wasn't watching intel.

I moved gang to the G8 gate, I was scouting the system already (I missed out on the majority of these kills... such is the life of a scout and/or FC). Bubbled up station with dictors and brought gang in. As gang started jumping a Drake landed on the G8 gate. Card immediately started yelling "push him through push him through". He got pushed and jumped in. So did the majority of the gang.

Drake held session timer... broke cloak and died.

Gang warped to station with close range ammo and speed scripts. I wasn't planning on camping long-the previous night a Dramiel undocked and broke session timer early. He insta popped. I figured we might get lucky tonight.

After 3 minutes I sent scouts to out gate and aligned gang. As I was about to give the command to warp...

"ishkur undocked" Cardking announced.

"kill it" I said.

Ishkur broke session change and died.

Nothing else wanted to play so we moved on into Pure Blind. On the out gate in 7D- a Nemesis jumped into the gang (I saw it as I jumped into Y-C). Gang managed decloak and one Nemesis down.

We moved up into Fade area, to O-C. I followed an Iteron V into O-C, holding gang back 1 jump as scouts were in VRH- (neighboring system). I grabbed Itty and started pounding it, hoping he would call for help.

He did.

I had brought tacklers into VRH- the moment Itty broke cloak. They were landing on O-C gate about the same time an Abso, Vexor, Cane, Dramiel and other assorted ships were landing on me.

"All fleet jump jump VRH- warp to O-C" I yelled. "Tacklers into O-C, grab everything!"

The spike in O-C wasn't unnoticed... as all the Wayfarer guys started running. I was just out of range of the Absolution and had no MWD cooking as I was taking damage and didn't want to amplify that at all. I grabbed the Dramiel but the double webs weren't enough, and the Vexor was the only thing I was able to hold...

fail.

Oh and the Hurricane... he never aggressed. He cross jumped the initial tackle and safed up in VRH-

Sad day, but chalk a T1 cruiser kill. We warped to station, where the locals had undocked 2 carriers (scary!). As we landed, all the sub caps docked without hesitation. I was going to have snipe hacs move above station and bump off the one carrier left (the other docked), as the minmitar station has a small undock radius... but then he docked too. 40 in local and no fights. no station games.

ugh.

We moved next door to L-C... same story. We landed on station, the one Drake there docked up. Then two carriers undocked followed by a Vaga...

"Spam lock on Vaga spam lock! If he breaks undock early melt him!" I said.

He broke early.

We hit him hard... and he may have gotten one cycle of reps from the Chimera before his Vaga went pop. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie.

After messing around that constellation for a few more minutes we headed towards ROIR- and EC-. EC- had one Drake on Torrinos, who warped before Easley or I could tackle him. Time to head home.

We started burning towards P-2 when I hit a dictor bubble set up on the out gate. Only a few hostiles in local... no dictor to be seen.

Weird.

Nothing on scan, Easley poking around the center of system. Time to move on. I jumped fleet into B-9 and warped them to the P-2 gate. I jumped into P-2.

I started aligning out when Cardking started yelling.

"Local spike local spike out of bubble align sun go go spank MWDS!" followed shortly by "Domi is primary get out of bubbles go go".

Apparently that cloaky dictor had bubbled the P-2 gate. Fatal used a jump bridge and warped to the gate we were landing on. Dominix landed first, whether by design or happenstance. Snipe HACs were safely at range when the mainstay of the hostile gang landed. I had jumped back into B-9 at this point and helped with primaries. We switched off the Dominix to hit a Basi that landed... he popped quick. Back to the Dominix, he popped. We melted the tackle that burned at us with not transversal. Rifter down, Worm down. Only one, a Malediction, actual kept his transversal up and managed to warp out before he died. Second Basilisk primaried... down Then a Tengu landed... Cardking immediately got a hard on: "Tengu primary Tengu primary take him down now now now!"

Tengu was going down slowly (2 Basi still alive propped him up) when a Cane started burning out closer and closer to our gang. We switched primary to the Cane, who died. Then right back to the Tengu, which Avi still had hero tackled. Tengu finally died, I warped gang off to a celestial. Hostile gang warped to a pos... leaving the tackle I had left (we lost 2 dictors and Avi's Vengeance) with a Basi and an Ishtar...

I had fleet warp to me asap, landing 60km off of the 2 hostiles on field. Tacklers grabbed them as fleet was landing and we added a third Basilisk and the Ishtar to the tally. Final battle report here. We lost a Hound in that fight... which I was perplexed with. Bombers should very rarely die... you never engage (decloak) unless you can safely warp out. In hot situations you should already be aligned lobbing torps from 50km away and hovering over the warp button when you get yellow boxed.

We gave them a GF in local, looted the field and headed home. 7D- had one red in it as I was scouting. I hit scan.. nothing. About to warp when the red landed in his Manticore on the in gate. I prepped fleet for decloak and locked him up. I dropped point/webs/guns on him to push him on when... he started burning off and red boxed me?

I laughed as my 425s 2 volleyed him. I hated his fit.

A forward scout (he had been heading home) reported a Drake camping a drag bubble in QXW-. No eyes next door (fail) so we positioned gang up on the gate. Easley jumped in... and Drake warped off. Talk about touchy! I had Easley leave local and we waited....

After a couple minutes I said forget and had fleet jump. As we were initiating warp... the Drake landed in his bubble! So this guy freaks with one and warps back, probably half way to his drag bubble when we spiked. Poor guy melted, and his name "Deadtired" didn't help him in local.

We moved on, picking off another Drake and Brutix on the way.

The joke was we couldn't get home with all the kills being thrown at us.

Finally we made it to 6VDT and we called it a night. Good times.

That is all.