Baptism of fire

Some time last week, in a chain of event mention in my buddy Letrange's blog, one of my alliance's wormhole systems got co-occupied by a corp that was looking for nothing but some kills and LOLz. No need to repeat all of Let's blog here about the first assault on the enemy POS but all week long the only thing that I could contribute to the war effort was a few comments about tactics, ship fits and planning, and I could only hope that something was left for me to shoot at one way or another. So with the first op putting the tower in reinforced on Wednesday the action was expected to start again on Friday, and then we could put an end to the enemy's little party in our backyard. The timing could not have been better for me as I got back from my parental week, and I had a brand-spankin' new Tempest that was ready to fire VW-Bug sized ordnance into stationnary targets.

Shambler mkII

So after a bit of refitting (I had autocannons on and our system has certain "features" that affects ships) I make my way slowly to the K-space system that has the entrance wormhole while listening in to battle updates on comms, being careful not to intrude on Letrange's FCing. An obscene amount of jumps later, especially in something as slow as a battleship, I finally get to destination and Let gives me my first order: there's a Falcon messing with everyone at the tower and because I am arty fit, I will be arriving basically in my optimal so I'm to send him a good volley, with love of course :) So a single shot of my six guns and the Falcon loses all shields and its armor is dented and he warps off just before the guns are reloaded. Good decision on his part. Bad decision on our part though was trying to shoot the tower with its guns still shooting at us and many enemies in system. And then my Tempest is starting to be hit very hard and it's now clear that there is a POS gunner active. I try to warp away but then notice a dinky Crow holding me down with a point, so the only thing I can do is wait for the inevitable and then warp my pod back to K-space. A few other ships go down and then a retreat/regroup is called. End of Round 1.

At first I was disappointed at the market in the area where the wormhole system was in, but a quick check later fixed that as I noticed I was only 6 jumps away from Jita! Going on a shopping spree in the middle of a battle is weird but that's exactly what I did so in no time I was in another Tempest, but this time I had oodles of Warrior II drones so inty pilots would hate me. We also get more people in our gang while the enemy, who we know to be mostly EU timezone players, is less and less as it's getting really late/early morning over there. So once everybody is refit, present in system and ready to go Letrange once again grabs the reins of the AMC war machine and points the fleet towards the enemy tower, with a different tactic this time: kill the guns! A good thing is that there are now only 2 or 3 active enemy pilots now and there is basically nothing they can do but watch us incapacitate each gun one by one. By the time the last gun was out the enemy had lost a few ships to our lighter elements and then gave up and ran for it, leaving us with the slow but rewarding job of blowing their tower to smithereens :))

Kablooey !!!

My evening wasn't quite done though. After working my trade alt like the slave she used to be (poor Cassy!) I finally had the ISK to purchase my very first Broadsword heavy interdictor cruiser !!! So yeah, you could say I was rolling in ISK yesterday, but after the purchase I am now back to scrounging, but I will admit that if I lose the Broadsword it won't be too long before I go buy another one. Plus, I'd have to get massively ganked before I lose it because I'm using The Fit (tm). If you don't know the ship, it's basically a slow cruiser that out-tanks battleships, can survive a Doomsday or three, and will stop anyone in its bubble from warping away. Can't wait to fly it in anger :)

Fugu, the Puffer Fish of Death

In closing news I also showed a local pirate how bad his Taranis was fit by taking him to the cleaners with my own Taranis. Pro Tip: Tarani have 10m3 of drone bay space. Use it !!! I didn't collect the 9mil ISK bounty because I didn't catch his pod but where I blew his ship up he barely dented my shields :)

So there you have it, an awesome Friday night and Saturday morning to come back to the game after a break. Good Job to everyone who was a part of this, and word of advice to any other corp or alliance that would want to become our neighbors without permission, we have carebears that can turn into Kodiaks !!!

Fly dangerous,

o7