Hello Pilots o7

Cinnamon Rage bringing you a bit of an update on recent happenings in Faction Warfare for the Amarr/Minmatar Warzone.

Things had been looking up for Amarr Militia over the past couple of months, prior to August the Minmatar had been making slow progress across the remaining Amarr territories reducing the Amarr to under 10 systems at one point. Putting the Minmatar within a stones throw of capturing the entire warzone. Meanwhile Dirt ‘n’ Glitter (D-N-G); a long standing Amarr Militia corporation who had left to join TEST in Null Sec decided to make a timely return to Faction Warfare and reinforce their beseiged brethren forming the Alliance Local is Primary (CTRLV). I caught up with Nikolai Agnon the Diplomat of D-N-G for his comments…

“Our stay in TEST was expected to be temporary from the start, as DNG has been and always will be a FW corp at heart. Warning, this is a rather long mail, but it should detail just about the entire situation. When we left FW, there was a large lack of content in the warzone. Our common message is that Minmatar don’t like to fight, however that’s admittedly pretty unfair to say, because context is everything. At the time, the Minmatar were well deep into their swing of ‘the pendulum’, but let the farmers do most of the work. There’s a lot of “the enemy sucks” on both sides, and I don’t want to get into that, but simply put, we took a vacation to null when there was no fleet action or fun solo / small gang content to be had in our warzone. Similarly, the vacation ended when we got wind that the Minmatar decided they were done farming, and that it was now time to try finishing the job. I look forward to fighting the slaves again, and giving them a real challenge to try and get that medal. We had a lot of fun with TEST, culture-wise. If they ever come out nearby, we’ll absolutely have to hang out together – everyone is sad that our partnership was so brief. Null life, though, while exciting (dictors are hella fun to fly), quickly grew old to us. One of the goals we had was to check out the new Aegis-sov, which looked like lots of fun. They took one of the better things about FW and made it all sov-y. Unfortunately for us, being so used to FW, it was awkward going from “get paid to plex” to the new “pay 40mil [Wicked Creek entosis price] to be able to plex for someone else”. I can definitely see it becoming fun in the future, and I love that its nature allows for smaller alliances to do well, but we were a bit spoiled, and each node we captured reminded us of “the good ol’ days”. On the bright side, with our new alliance we’ll be able to claim sov of our own in the future – a significantly less nuclear option than the one we had to work with recently. Being back in the militia is fun. While we were gone, we were in regular contact with our old friends in PYRE (and TGODS), who often commented that our lack of presence in local was greatly missed. Our first fleet back, even Hoplite and U’K were spamming our corp ad in local alongside us. All begrudgings aside, I love our warzone, I really do. As for Amarr specifically, well, we’re getting the band back together. I personally joined Amarr just over a year ago, at the start of the first Burn Huola, when Amarr was in a similar situation: the underdogs, the wrong side of the pendulum. When we had our vacation, the pendulum had begun slowing down, but the actual pilots were deep in the joys of T4-5 LP payout coupled with a decent ISK-LP conversion ratio, which meant any plexing efforts we did would be cancelled by farmers the next day (I once personally plexed a system 15 -> 25% one night, and it was at 13% when I woke up). This cycle should be coming to a close soon, with a devalued LP rate and players burnt out from farming. If the Minmatar want the medal, they’re going to have to take it by force – and it won’t be easy without the farmer momentum that they wasted. As for forming an alliance, there’s a multitude of reasons, but most importantly we want to bring some sense of unity to Amarr. Amarr has a ton of newbros right now, and quite a few smaller corporations that contribute to the warzone. The forming of Local is Primary is an open invitation for smaller Amarr groups to be a part of the upcoming renewed campaign. Just as DNG is always recruiting, so is CTRLV, so long as members love having fun pewing slaves with us. We will always be ourselves, and CTRLV will likely always be known by its loudest corp, but we want to invite others DNG is here to have fun. Despite all the smack and grief we give the slaves, we do like meeting them on the battlefield. I certainly hope CCP does something to curb the reliance on farming, which could totally shuffle up the annoyingly attritive pendulum cycle. FW needs a revamp, but it’s still more fun than anything else in eve if all you want to do is log on and shoot some war targets. DNG is recruiting!

DRINK | PLEX | WELP | REPEAT”

Meanwhile Calibrated Chaos (L33T.), another ex-Amarr Militia corporation chose to leave their position with Low Sec giants Dead Terrorists (IKILU) and return to Imperial Service and formed the alliance Habitual Chaos (-HB-). Between D-N-G and L33T. they have rallied several of the non-alliance affiliated English speaking Amarr militia corporations and changed the theme of the warzone from ‘Viva la Revolution!’ to ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. The 24th Imperial Crusade pushed back hard against the Minmatar over doubling the number of systems in Imperial hands over the course of several weeks in an assault from their core systems of Arzad, Kourmonnen and Kamela.

Following this comeback by the 24th Imperial Crusade things have not been all bad news for Minmatar Militia however. Reinforcements of their own have deployed into the warzone in the shape of Hashashin Cartel (HASH) who in short order have incorporated The Ghosts of Deep Space (TGODS) and Hoplite Brigade (HPLT) into their alliance to form the strongest single force in the Minmatar Militia. EN24 caught up with Chaddington Diplomat for the Cartel for his comments on recent events:

“Hashashin Cartel has always had the mindset of playing Eve like the internet spaceships game it is. We care very little about how our killboard looks, isk efficiency and the like. We simply care about having maximum fun in our game, and shooting nerds. Hash originally was formed in 2012 by a small group of our guys living in Great Wildlands. In late 2013, when content was drying up for them they moved out here to minmatar faction war space to find more fights, and started recruiting heavily. We lived out here for several months, through the minmatar civil war (fighting on the side of Biohazard), steadily growing our numbers. We had some good fights out here, did some plexing, flipped some systems and had a lot of fun Promo video of our time in FW. But eventually we wanted a change and moved back to our homeland in Great Wildands in early 2015. Over the next few months we fought the residents of GW, namely Senex Legio, took some money moons and generally carebeared through the summer.

But we always loved the quick action that can be found in faction warfare space. So after an alliance meeting we decided to move back to minmatar low sec and establish ourselves again as a presence in the warzone. Since we’ve moved back we’ve managed to piss off the resident powerhouse, Dead Terrorists and their allies Shadow Cartel. We’ve been trading blows and having some big fights with them.

The Amarr provide some good content as well, on a smaller scale. Habitual Chaos seem to be main force on the Amarr side in our timezone and give us some good fights. Also, Hash is recruiting, please have your haiku (5-7-5) ready upon application.”

If you are looking to get involved in Faction Warfare for either Amarr Militia or Minmatar Militia the warzone still has plenty of activity for capsuleers who wish to fight for the Empires. As things stand the warzone appears to be in a stalemate with Amarr Militia holding steady at 14 systems (after falling back slightly from 16) to the Minmatars 56 systems.

Happy Hunting Everyone

Cinnamon Rage o7