Jihad gone right... or wrong... or... o_O

The purpose of a Jihad is to make a fleet full of Tech 1 frigates and cruisers, all fit with Tech 1 modules, roam to a target (usually another fleet camping a gate or macro ratters), and kill the most expensive ships to win the ISK battle. Most of the time the entire fleet is destroyed when it lands into the arms of a waiting enemy fleet, but not before the enemy loses a HAC or two, or maybe a battleship and a few battlecruisers. When that happens we either pod or medical clone our way home and we fall over laughing.

And once in a Blue Moon something crazy like this happens (sorry to sensitive people, this really is Bozo's killboard):

http://www.eatabagofdicks.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=10075

We expected to die, and what we got instead is the best ISK loss ratio I've ever seen in my short EVE career, let alone FC career. I don't know who was FCing on their side but DAMN !!!

Update attempt #2 (plz don't crash on me)

Here's to hoping Blogspot saves correctly; I'll copy everything to a text file after I'm done just in case. So the fleet was starting to form up at about 0030 evetime with a scheduled departure time of 0100. As this was pretty much my idea and I had volunteered to FC I was finding myself stuck between fitting my ship (a gank Thorax for a slight change of pace), distributing ships and mods to players who had nothing but T2 stuff, answering private convos, and even interviewing a newcomer into our midst (a first for me), all while the Bozos were goofing off on Vent. But by some kind of miracle at 0100 pretty much everybody was ready and only a few minutes later we were jumping out of Jorund.

As we were getting deeper into Curse there wasn't much action but I had a plan and a destination, the Q-GQ system in Wicked Creek. It's no big secret that this is one of our favorite playgrounds and I think you can see why. In our first pass in Q-GQ we got a cloaky Zealot (huh... ok) off the station, and someone on our outbound gate killed a Manticore who should've cloaked; EVE is weird that way! I have the fleet go on a small tour of the Q-GQ constellation and at some point we catch and tackle a Disco-Rokh (a Rokh fitted with a full rack of smartbombs if you want to know), and as we're looting it a lone TCF Badger MkII jumps right into us. He lasted about 3 seconds, including the pod! After we're done with him I decide to take the fleet to the adjoining dead-end constellation in the search for more tasty kills, and our route takes us back to the Q-GQ system, which by now is alerted to our antics. This is where the fun starts.

Jumping straight into an enemy fleet is usually a bad omen as that fleet is already set up at optimals and waiting for you, and your all scattered and hit by surprise. I had the fleet hold cloak as long as it could while I was deciding my first primary. When I call that the ECM (in the form of a single Falcon) has to go, my much-more-experienced CEO reminds me that this Falcon is over 200km away. As I find myself at a loss and time is running out I then delegate the primary-calling to him. The Ishtar is called and the Battle of Q-GQ begins. And then it's the Thorax. And then the Purifier. Then the Jag. The Raptor, Hawk, Moa... and then work starts on the bigger ships. A Falcon dies and is replaced by another, but this one gets jammed by our Blackbird. And it just doesn't stop until the Typhoon finally arrives to meet his fate. And they just could not kill us !!! After a small lull a Raven arrives and we finally get him on the other side of the XQS gate. And believe it or not as we had jumped out someone had brought a Badger in to loot the wrecks so we all jumped back into Q-GQ and our faster elements finally catch him in the 1L-OEK system. WHAT A RUSH !!! We finally get to loot all the wrecks and fill our cargo holds to full capacity, and we decide then to go back home to drop off loot and then go out again.

You'd think we'd stop here? Noooo! I decided to stay docked to write my after-actions report in our forums but another player took over FC duty and brought the same gang, plus/minus a few players, to the exact same system. As I'm finishing off my report they kill another Raven and an Arbitrator, and I rejoin the fleet just in time to get in on a Drake kill. We ended our evening by playing station games with a Moros dreadnought of all things! If we had somehow been able to bump the ship out of dock range we might have gotten him, after a very long time of course, but a dread is a Big Ship and the station in Q-GQ has a huge docking range, so nothing came of it. After about a half-hour of smacking local (which had gone down drastically since the big battle... I wonder why) we called an end to a very successful, or unsuccessful as so little of us died, and headed towards home.

Now, I have very little to no knowledge of low-sec pirating, capital ship and POS warfare, Faction warfare, or the more usual activities in EVE like mining, exploration, missioning or industry. but I doubt very much that any of these things can be as exciting and as satisfying as the 0.0 skirmish warfare we did yesterday night. This ranks way up there as one of my greatest nights of playing EVE :)

!!! Alliance pimp4ge time !!!

If any of this kind of PvP appeals to you, and you are certain that you want NOTHING but PvP action (no POS fueling, no territory holding, no mining ops, maybe a bit of 'plexing to change the pace if a good one is found), then feel free to come by the "Bigtop" channel in-game and talk to anyone there. If I happen to be offline, tell whoever you're talking to that Cozmik sent you :))

Fly cheap, kill rich !!!

o7