About every night, Obstergo, which is TEMNAVA’s US timezone, goes out looking for PvP. This means Dasani, JK, xtrem, Fitz and a couple of the guys suit up in scanners and disperse throughout the holes and out into low/null looking for potential with the fleet on standby until we have targets, or we find an area and just go roaming. The night of the fight was no different. I ran out to grab dinner and the scouts were diggin their heels into wormhole space looking for potential. As I was returning to my apartment with some Subway, I checked my phone to see I had a text:

“Pvp” from JK Shadow (I have his RL name in there, but for the sake of SeCuRiTy)

I hop on comms to hear that our guys found a few people doing some sites or some shit, wasn’t paying attention really as I was more concerned with what to bring and how far down the chain I had to go to catch up. I hopped in my trusty Legion (used to be.. heh) and headed toward the fleet who were engaging a couple odds and ends already. I got there in time to snag in on a Rapier who warped right to the hole? No worries, it happens. *PoP*

Noticed these guys were Hard Knocks Inc., who I had seen on the forums and checked their boards, seemed like a solid group of guys. We chatted in local for a few minutes and they seemed chill. We scouted the nullsec K162 in their hole and held on it for about, I don’t know, felt like 20 minutes… I was eating Subway, didn’t care.

Comms were back and forth, JK had scanned down their static and about 4 holes deep (that’s what she said) and we decided that we were going to go on a WH roam instead of low/null roam. Majority won, and we warped to their static and jumped in, warped to the static’s static.

“Hey guys, where are you, I’m tackled by a Loki… More ships landing” said Trail Stevens on comms. He said he was on the null, so we told him to jump through, hold cloak and jump back once he broke cloak, so it would buy us time to get back to him, as we were a couple holes down at this point. We land as he was going down and began the escalation. They had some HAC’s, an Archon, a Bhaalgorn, Domi, and a couple T3’s on the hole. I land first and call Bhaalgorn primary and direct points spread incase they ran. We were going to ensure an escalation.

We initially kept the fleet on the hole incase of “blob”. The Archon was not triaging and we were confused, but overheat ensued and Bhaalgorn died. I called for Proteus secondary, not thinking about the Nuet Domi, Dexter landed in the Mega, took over calling and anchor as is the norm. I’m “retired” and backseat normally. He redirected to push the Domi out of the hole or kill it. Domi jumped and I whispered KILL DPS to Dex, so DPS primaries started going down. At some point during this, don’t remember, the Archon jumped out and back, criting the hole. Fighters were out and hitting people, so we called for fighters to be broadcasted and killed them. The object was to keep the Falcon on the NON TRIAGING Archon. It worked and they were losing ground.

It is important to note that we were not podding or calling pods on comms. This was a mistake that cost us the field at the end of this fight. Shortly, another Archon landed and triaged. JK called for the fleet to move off the hole, and Dexter set ALL Anchor on him. That was mistake number 2. The call to move off the hole and pull the opponents from their triage was smart, however it would have been lucrative to pull the Logi further in front of our fleet on their own LOGI Anchor. This would have made us more secure since we would have been capitalizing on our Logi’s range. Lessons learned.

Dexter then began using “alpha” tactics by calling a primary, then having the everyone lock a secondary, waiting for the Archon to begin reps on the primary then pulling DPS, timing the shot and firing on the secondary via countdown to attempt to drop a target before the Archon could rep it. With the amount of DPS ships available, this only worked on the lower tanked ships, such as HAC’s, BC’s, and below. The T3’s and larger still had tanks that could survive this tactic and they had also brought a Blackbird and an Arazu to the party after killing our Falcon. They were getting jams off on our Logi as more of their lost ships were reshipping to counter our fleet. Another Bhaalgorn. an Armageddon and more T3’s landed and they were getting points and webs all over.

After Dexter’s Mega was popped we called for anyone not pointed to move off field if they could and Logi to assist where they could. Most of them were pointed at this point and jammed out. I attempted to web down and burn, but since my Legion was more AHAC, AB, dual Web, out running the guys webbing me down was not likely. I spread webs to help the Logi pull away, but unfortunately I was unable to get reps at this point and the Legion was going down. I called for anyone not pointed to scramble safe spots that Fitz had made for us, kept firing on their Phobos to get him to bubble down for reps and afterwhich I ejected to save skillpoints and jet out, not thinking that they would withdraw aggression and save me the lossmail (thanks for that, gents).

http://obstergo.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=14022944

Hard Knocks took the field, the loot, and my Legion, but they were a great group of guys about it, “good fights” all over local and honestly it was a hell of a lot of fun. Would fight or fleet with the Hard Knocks guys anytime. Thanks from all of us at Obstergo to you guys for bringing the fight and look forward to more in the future.