The Power of Vengeance

And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. - Jules, Pulp Fiction (1994)


After the super alliance formed by the combined forces of Goonswarm, IRON, Razor, RA, Tortuga (debatable), and miscellaneous other alliances who attacked BoB's fortress in Delve and nearly killed them, it wasn't hard to imagine the simmering thoughts of death the bobbits harbored for their northern brethern. In recent months, the GBC has been conducting massive campaigns in Tribute, Vale of The Silent, Deklein, and surrounding areas. The dark horse Triumvirate has been working with BoB, leaving their own trail of destruction by eradicating Hydra. IRON and Pure were the latest casualties in the so-called napfest to fall to GBC advances.

Just yesterday, the GBC scored another impressive feat in the Tribute pipe: the systematic slaughtering of some 50 NC capitals and innumerable support ships. A battle report is given by both SirMolle of BoB and KIAEddz of KIA Alliance from opposing points of view (with propaganda thrown in for good measure). What was supposed to be an ambush on the part of NC backfired badly; they were supposed to gate jump their support and battleships into M-O, cyno the capitals in at the gate (??!) and titan bridge the rest in at the same time. The last time the NC tried to pull this on Insurgency, the same thing happened: the node crashed, NC pilots lacked the discipline to log on at the same time, and the result was a turkey shoot that yielded some 60+ kills for me over a period of 2 hours. This was no different except that the NC had capital ships that crashed at the gate in M-O, with predictably disastrous results as they all logged in one by one. It made me wonder if the NC fleet commanders ever learn from their experience, and if they knew how to play chess.

Battlefield in M-O from a bobbit's point of view. Red ships and yellow wrecks belong to the Coalition.

One by one, the segments of the train has disintegrated. It will only be a matter of time until all the best PVP corps are consolidated into Morsus Mihi as BoB and Tri continue their rampage through the North. Then and only then will we know if MM can survive an onslaught on the scale of the Delve invasion that Bob successfully withstood.

My only qualm is that I couldn't be there to watch the NC die, for Insurgency.

A Prophecy Fulfilled

Remember that many months ago, when I was still in Insurgency, that I made a prophecy about the combination of the four pvp alliances MC, BoB, Tri, and Insurgency into one superpower that can steamroll the NAPland that is the new North? Well, part of it is coming into fruition with the latest MAX campaign kills. As it stands, the Northern Coalition and Band of Brothers are traditional enemies from the war in the South about 8 months ago.


BoB Loses 12 Dreads

The exact title on our alliance forums. By the way, they also took down 3 Morsus Mihi motherships (an Aeon and two nyxes), 13 dreads, 2 carriers, and more than half of the Coalition's support and battleship fleet. You can view the details of the battle on BoB's killboard; while the GBC fleet far outnumbers the NC fleet, the irony of a Coalition member's comment in local cannot be disregarded:

"There s [sic] no need for smack. It is natural for weaker entities to group up in order to try and defeat a stronger, more powerful enemy. It's flattering really."

As an ex-Insurgency member, I cannot help but chuckle.


The Death of IRON's Flagship

Insurgency, as they were ousted out of Branch, held a big grudge for IRON - an alliance whom Insurgency helped defend and had blue standings with, who caved under the pressure of the Northern Coalition to aid in their quest to remove the Insurgency threat from Branch, sending in huge fleets on the second wave and helped push the momentum of the war against us after the death of Razor's Erebus. IRON even helped camp Insurgency into the Venal Guristas station after we were removed forcibly from Branch.

As with wars in the real world, one can be friends with someone while their countries are hostile to each other; simply look at the stories of friendship between individuals living in Israel and Palestine, Georgia and Russia, the United States and China. I still have many friends in IRON, one of the pillars of the North, from my times living in the Drone Regions. And yet one can sometimes be easily swept into the shifting sands that represent politics. While I cannot blame any of my IRON buddies, for all's fair in love and war, I also cannot help but smile at the Band of Brother's success in Deklein, home of IRON.

The result of the skirmish? A dead Macabre Votum titan, flown by Lord2evil. A summary of the battle, presented from BoB's point of view, can be found on CAOD and is surprisingly good and free from smack.


Touché, Razor alliance. Better be careful with Intensity Green's Erebus - Eve has not yet seen a titan pilot losing 2 titans!

A Brave New World (North)

Northern Coalition bandwagon count:

Razor, Morsus Mihi, PURE, Stella Polar, Majesta Empire, Mostly Harmless, IRON, Atlas, Firmus Ixion?, who else did I miss… et al.

vs.

Insurgency

Whelp! I give up blogging about battle frontline news, since it’s worse than trying to keep track of a hot potato. Entities come and go, titans multiply themselves by 8 or 9, bandwagons fill up and roll over, epic e-drama ensues… Why do people watch TV when Eve is full of soap operas and cost less too, if you have fewer than 10 alts? If you live in empire then well… I hope you enjoy the seclusion.

There has been wild speculations of Triumvirate planning blue standings with Insurgency to repel the efforts of the Coalition to oust us out of Branch. Who knows if that will even happen? If it does, however, and Tri decides to throw their supercaps into the warzone, I can guarantee lots of fun times (or lag) for all parties involved. It will be a good way for Tri to show that they are still a premier PVP alliance despite the internal strife. Imagine a new universe with four PVP superpowers working with each other: Band of Brothers, Mercenary Coalition, Insurgency, and Triumvirate. The Axis of “Evil”. One can certainly dream!

When the dust settles, it will be a completely different world up in the North end of the universe. Will Insurgency fall as Phoenix Allianz/RARE did? Will the Northern Coalition bandwagon, complete with everyone and their kitchen sinks and meat shield and dronelets, steamroll the “evil” power blocs or spill and run over everyone when it hits a stray pebble on the road? Truth to be told, I enjoy being on the dark side, fighting outnumbered against a disorganized blob. You may argue with me all you want, but when you throw the entire Northern Coalition of twenty plus alliances together along with FCs who speak only Russian or German or English, it is a recipe for failure at best. I’ve fought on both sides, and I can safely claim that the lack of organization when the Coalition was defending Phoenix space was appalling and made fleet work almost more boring than mining.

And that is why I am enjoying myself so much right now. Fantastic pew pew everyday – why did I deny myself of that by living in the drone regions? I apologize to my Ro3 friends who have joined the “good” guys, some of whom I have shot and podded (and vice versa) but still keep in touch with. It’s all good fun.

Hail… Long live Insurgency!


In other news: You may feel highly displeased as an empire dweller to find out that CCP has taken out NPC sale orders for shuttles, but you will be very pleased as an investor/trader/manufacturer. Just pray that you don’t get podded in your +5 implants…

"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!