"Is that smoke coming out of the Z-K node server?!?!"

Node crash party, anyone? (For a detailed battle report and discussion, see here.)

Barring the failed blob attack by Morsus Mihi/Pure/Majesta Empire last weekend, they brought in an even bigger blob of 700-800 ships last night, comprising of pretty much everyone in the North save for Triumvirate. I knew something was up when I tried to log my main and alt in for a quick skill change before dinner and I was greeted with the black screen of death for over 30 minutes. So I logged my empire alt on and checked the map. 'Lo and behold, a huge red angry spot in Z-K showing about 470 players in system. Complaints of lag rose from empire space even.

This could bode well or really badly for Insurgency. If the node crashes, that's the end of the story. We will get overrun simply because they will have more trying to log in, and hence a higher success rate. I figure that I will bring my battleship out anyway for some fun. I don't build or buy ships that I can't frontline. Save Picasso artpieces for the museum gallery.

Was partway through making dinner when station finally loaded, switched into my Rokh to join the carnage. Turns out that our friendly neighbors, RAZOR Alliance, had anchored a small POS in one of our station systems earlier in the day. After diplomatic requests by our alliance leadership for RAZOR to remove their POS, they responded by replacing it with a faction deathstar. At that point, a decision was made to set them to -10, as they were previously blue. This seemed preplanned to me; everyone had been postulating that RAZOR would reset Insurgency like the other alliances in the NAPfest power bloc (i.e. set everyone blue so we can hug each other), and this seemed like the perfect excuse. There was insider intel floating around that RAZOR had planned this op for some time.

They quickly set up a gate camp in BKG, one of the neighboring systems to our own carrier camp in Z-K. As the evening goes on, local in BKG was reported to rise to 500+, including party crashers from Mostly Harmless (wait... you don't want us to buy titans from you anymore?), MM, Pure, ME, Stella Polar, Atlas, RoadKill, + everyone and his dog. Phalanx Alliance managed to "discourage" a 100man Hydra gang from joining them by the traditional method of ganking them on their way. No disrespect to Hydra FCs, but you simply do not logoffski a 100man fleet that has been aggressed. (Ask the Russians, they know how to do it properly.)

Razor and MH split off to attack Insurgency in Z-K, at this point with 250 and multiple capital ships in fleet, from a backdoor system, in what is presumably called a pincer attack. Unfortunately when they warped to the BKG gate, they suffered the same problems as the fellas trying to jump in: Lag from grid loading. Local was at approximately 300 with 100 in our fleet. Someone commented about how BoB must've been enjoying a turkey shoot like this from defending Delve. As my luck always goes, I got instapopped in my Rokh (by warping into a bubble, cheers!), and promptly switched into my trusty crow. By this time the battle was almost over - the remnants of support chased down fleeing enemy battleships as the Coalition suffered massive losses and pulled out, after a 5 hour slug(lag)fest. I was surprised at how MM, so good at playing the lag game, fell into the trap themselves.

I didn't manage to get any good loot from the battlefield. =(

However, I did get about 40 kills this night, mostly from a bubble camp after the battle was over and when hostiles were trying to log back on, only to warp smack into the bubble. Being the killmail whore that I am, I fitted a sensor booster on my crow to send the poor sods back home more quickly. All in all, my kills far outweighed my expensive Rokh loss. One of the best gate camps I've ever been in, and I even stayed up til 2am to net some more kills at the risk of passing out at my desk at work the next day.

A glance at the star map (number of ships destroyed in the last 24 hours) showed a huge, blistering angry red pimple in Z-K, with over 480 ships destroyed that night. Ooh, perhaps some of my ships will sell faster?

I'm having the best time of my life in Eve!