Another month begins, another badass Collides match is upon us between The Afterlife. and WE FORM VOLTA. You can watch the match here, remind yourself of the format here and watch previous matches here.

The Afterlife.

If you look up “scary motherfuckers” in the Alliance Tournament bible, it’s just a picture of The Afterlife. alliance logo. The Afterlife. have fought in the past two Alliance Tournaments and have already built themselves a pretty badass kill list of alliances to reach the top end of the bracket twice in a row:

The G0dfathers

SCUM.

C0VEN

CVA

Shadow Cartel

Exodus.

Triumvirate

End of Life.

Together We Solo

Agony Empire

The Afterlife. are a Russian alliance who were the practice partners of another great team, Gorgon Empire, in the past. We’ll just have to wait and see if they can take Volta to, *cough* the afterlife *cough* of their next clones (sorry).

WE FORM VOLTA

Volta are the core of the Triumvirate team (before that the ATX winning VoC team) who have split off to do their own thing. In ATXII, The Afterlife. beat Tri. However, last summer in ATXIII, Tri got their own back, meaning that the score stands tied at 1-1. This is as good as an opportunity as any to have a little grudge match tie-breaker.

With an AT and two SCL wins under their belts (if a few years ago), and top-ten showings year on year, they are a team with an incredibly solid pedigree and a strong opponent for The Afterlife.

The Setups

The Afterlife.

Basilisk, Gila, Gila, Jackdaw, Harpy

Sleipnir, Sleipnir, Svipul, Svipul, Stiletto

Typhoon Fleet Issue, Typhoon Fleet Issue, Hyena, Navitas, Navitas

Nightmare, Nightmare, Raptor, Bantam, Bantam

Astarte, Oneiros, Confessor, Confessor, Maulus

Scorpion Navy Issue, Scorpion Navy Issue, Claw, Claw, Vigil

Claymore, Curse, Phantasm, Burst, Burst

Setup 1 confuses me a little, I *think* it’s a kiting comp that’s avoiding the more standard RLML Orthrus/Cerb, but I don’t know why as they haven’t used those hulls elsewhere and to my knowledge the RLML one is stronger on the whole. It also has the potential to rush right in and tank will with the resist bonuses on the Gila and T2 tank on the Jackdaw and Harpy. The slow drones of the Gila mean you usually want to have a drone navigation computer, and there seems to be a lack of assistance to application apart from the tackle Harpy. Setups 2 and 3 are building on solid ground that has been tread before with a Minmatar rush and RHML/Cruise TYFI comp with logi frigs. AN interesting variant on the Minmatar team is that of a bomber for extra DPS, over another utility frog for more control.

Setup 4 is very exciting, we’re yet to see a solid Nightmare comp and this one has a great chance to be a strong addition to the list of dual BS core teams. One of the main reasons they’ve struggled in the past is that TDs absolutely wreck them, making Volta’s sixth comp kinda scary for them. Setup 5 follows the “Tusker” Archetype CS/T2 logi/double T3D/flavour frig comp, going with a Maulus for some control. You can think of it as an armour version of the Minmatar rush mentioned previously.

Setup 6 brings us the return of the Scorp Navys, with Afterlife bringing Claws to help hold down that the SNIs are trying to kill rather than PL’s extra-DPS bombers. Hopefully it will work better for them than it did for PL! In the PL matches we saw the Scorp Navys tank amazingly well until they ran out of cap charges, the main difficulty of the comp being DPS application, where the Claws should help (until they get murderzoned by antisupport). Setup 7 struggles for DPS but I’m really interested to see how the shield Curse interacts and the strength of neuts in a 5v5 format as it’s not been explored that much so far, though i’m certain when applied effectively it’s going to be exceptionally powerful. Warlords ran a similar setup recently in their match.

WE FORM VOLTA

Typhoon Fleet Issue, Typhoon Fleet Issue, Hyena, Inquisitor, Inquisitor

Barghest, Barghest, Vigil, Bantam, Bantam

Orthrus, Orthrus, Cerberus, Caracal, Keres

Sleipnir, Scimitar, Svipul, Svipul, Purifier

Vindicator, Guardian, Enyo, Enyo, Sentinel

Eos, Ishtar, Ishtar, Navitas, Navitas

Astarte, Oneiros, Confessor, Confessor, Hound

If you are looking for a single word to describe VOLTA’s setups, it would be “solid”. Setups 1-4 and 7 have already seen good use in some form or another. Setup is 5 based on solid AT principles of tournaments a few years ago – getting a Vindicator on targets with the tackle, sturdiness and non-negligeable DPS of assault frigates being good for you and bad for the other guy.

Setup 6 is the one I really want to see out of VOLTA. Drone comps have (unsurprisingly) fallen out of favour in the tourney meta since the ban on T2 drones, so I’m super interested to see if VOLTA has found a way to bring them back in some form or another.

This match is going to be badass; VOLTA bringing the tried and true against The Afterlife’s more creative setup designs. Who will come out on top? Tune in this Sunday at 20:00 EVE time to find out.