6pm Sunday night and madness is due to begin. Ganked 44; Gunpower, Treason and Plot is about to head out in Missile ships, cruiser and under. The 120 man fleet we have should be a laugh, as always.

This time, however, there’s something for us to shoot.

Nashh Kadavr, long time EVE blogger, has recently announced his departure from the realm of internet spaceships. To go out with a bang, Nashh was organising a “party” in the low-security system of Goinard. He’d be undocking a 4 Billion ISK Iteron, followed by a Carrier with a silly-high bounty of a Billion (or was it 10?) on his Pod.

This was, sadly, almost 30 jumps away through Lowsec from our starting System. We have a bit of a trek ahead.

Fortunately, the nearby lowsec locals have accidentally given us entertainment. A scout has reported a RR Domi gang going GCC in the Lowsec next to our Highsec rally. They’re attacking a Navy Scorp. SOUND THE CHARGE MEN.

The Domis melt fast. One lucky potato warps away, whilst three jump into Highsec. With GCC. CONCORD met them, finishing them off. Battle Report. A good start to the night!

So began the long trip to Goinard. 30 jumps of not-a-lot. Sigh.

An hour later, we rocked into Goinard. We doubled local to 208 with our arrival, proceeded to fill local and then warped to Nashh’s station to say hi!

We bomb round on gates and shoot flashies whilst we wait for the event to start. A small E-Uni gang is about as well as a whole host of neutral pilots. Nashh asked us, politely, to move off the station to let him out, so we did. An old corpmate of mine, Wrathhammer, has brought 6 Sniggwaffe Carriers full of frigates to a station and he and his buddies join our comms and fleet, giving us a small boost in numbers.

Five minutes later, Nashhcalls in local. “PLANET THREE”

We all warp to P3 to find a lot of neutrals buzzing about. The plan is to avoid GCC’ing our fleet because we want to reship at some point when we explode, so we hold off engaging the other non-flashies for now.

Suddenly, Nashh lands at 100km in an Iteron Mk 4 – Quafe Ultra Edition.

He doesn’t last long, a good 2 bill dropping in the wreckage. Which somebody shoots. Hah.

Whilst we debate over “who shot it”, Shadow Cartel jump us with a mixed subcap fleet.

They are no match for the swarm of neutrals here though, and are quickly batted off field. So far so good. We start looting the field, as is customary, when a large red blob passes through our grid to a nearby spot. We saw Archons in there.

“POCO” someone yells on comms. “They’re at the Custom’s Office”. The battlefield has been chosen and so we will ride to glory. Brackets turned off. Graphics turned down. It’s go time. We fleet warp to the POCO at 30km.

Nashh is in the center of this inpregnable fortress of death. They’ve placed Tier 3 snipers behind them and while we avoided the Smartbombing capitals, we’re right in their range. Mangala pulls us away whilst our probers and scouts move round to get us on top.

We drop scouts on outlying BCs, bringing our missiles to bear on the ones we catch. The other neutrals are clogging the main field with their wrecks, buying us valuable time.

SonnenLegion are fielding a whole bunch of BCs, so they bear the brunt of our warheads. The Shadow Cartel gang is comfortably tanking with their carriers, though a few ships still get caught out. Tidi is starting to rise.

Snuff Box land with a mixed Absolution/Guardian fleet (14 Guardians, I believe) and start engaging Shadow.

Several corps have brought their own fleets. I see Balkan Express flying mixed T3/Cruisers. Uni pilots are back in noobships. The battle rages between the factions, when another force joins.

Drunk ‘n’ Disorderly have dropped Navy Apocs and Vindicators. Landing pretty much at 0, they’re shooting away before we realise their arrival. I think we’re starting to be rather outmatched. Not a lot of the big ships are dying, though plenty of explosions are being had!

Lost Obsession arrive, bringing their own Archons and Navy Apocs to the field. Holy crap. A 5-6 way brawl is now underway. 50 way if you count the random pilots on field.

The Shadow Archons are holding firm, oblivious to the maelstrom around them. One by one, however, the other major fleets start to focus fire on Shadow. I later learnt that a temporary truce was declared against Shadow to kill Nashh. Truly a cause worth of such a fight. Whilst they desperately tried to break the Archons, we had found a juicier target. The grid had split between the POCO and the planetary warpin, and a Tier 3 gang were bouncing between the grids to evade fire. Cheeky bastards. We were not having any of that.

Probes dropped, scouts sent, tackle applied, fleet warped.

Whilst we battled here, someone had dropped a smattering of Dreadnoughts on field to attack Nashh. His tank was dipping downwards. Surely the end was nigh!

The Snigg pilots left our comms. Their reasoning became clear. A Pandemic Legion Archon had arrived on the POCO. He brought friends.

A flash of light and twenty, maybe thirty PL Carriers land on grid. Dubbed “Slowcats” by the feline-loving nullsec players, they dropped a mass of Sentry drones and began annihilating all they came across. The non-Shadow capitals begin to retreat as we re-enter field and take advantage of the renewed chaos to cause havoc to logi-chains by shooting everyone precisely once. Once again, we start using probes and bounces to get ourselves onto outliers – the PL swarm too deadly too approach. The DnD dreadnoughts and Shadow Archons are holding firm however, their tank unbreaking. Perhaps PL are struggling? Tidi is jumping between 50% and a soul-crushing 5%. SLOOOOW MOOOO.

The fight continues for another 15 minutes untill PL decide “fuck this noise” and do what we knew they would. 20 SuperCarriers hit the field.

The fight ended pretty quickly after that, Nashh succumbing to the Supercap swarm.

Ourselves? We fought a mixed Shadow subcap fleet a few minutes later.

We won, but not without sacrificing my Osprey Navy. Dammit.

Here’s some links:

EVE-Kill Battle Report

Excellent FHC writeup by Muffinsrevenger of Snuff Box

Video from the perspective of a Lost Obsessions capital pilot.

We were not done yet. Goinard might be lost to us, but Ganked still has a roam to do.

We reshipped and took our 70 remaining ships into Providence. We swiftly encountered a small CVA gang consisting of 5 Guardians and 5 Faction Battleships – smartbomb fit of course. Gotta keep that 1 logi to 1 combat ratio, guys.

We ignore them and move along, only to find they have jumped in front of us! TREACHERY.

The CVA gang jumps a lone BS into us. Baity bait is bait. We engage and the rest of them jump, but a Guardian decloaks early. PILE ON. The early destruction prevents their Guardians forming their capchain early and another falls. Most of the Faction ships jump out but the original bait, a Geddon Navy, dies. Their hero bubbler also dies to our fleet. Battle Report.

Rather happy at our killing of a fleet designed to kill us, we burned for HED-GP – currently owned by TEST. We knew they’d give us a fight.

We jump in, the TEST fleet meets us in mixed BC/frigs. So my system doesn’t load and I crash out. Fuck. I re-log back in to see the TEST fleet falling fast. I make use of my time by grabbing 5 podkills before they flee the bubbles.

TEST are not happy at their loss, however, and drop insta-Canes and Drakes on us. We die pretty much straight away. Not a single guy makes it to the Highsec – TEST have it 100-bubble camped with insta-canes.

Battle Report.

What a night.

Note: If anyone needs to correct my fleet compositions of the Goinard fight, please tell me!