A Short History of Corelin Part 7: CROM!

Disciples of Crom was an Alliance unlike any other I’d joined.  I kept telling myself that in the hope that I’d believe it.  We really did have several things going for us.  Everyone with a stake in leadership knew each other in real life to some extent.  Our combined knowledge of game mechanics and our combination of personalities and capabilities was promising.

Fancy Hats joined when Crom was already in the middle of a war.  We had known about it, in fact we had to drop our own wardecs on the same people just to enter.  Our first couple of fights were frustrating.  Like all young alliances we had people all on different pages to fitting standards, how to act in a fleet engagement, and of course some people just wanted to do things differently.

We spent the early part of December really focusing on the little things, getting a unified fittings doctrine, making sure that in fleets, people were doing what best served the fleet, not whatever the hell they wanted to.  It was a lot of work.  All I was doing was fittings, and it was a nightmare at times.

Still by mid-December things looked to be turning around.  Activity was up, our wormhole folks were making good money when they bothered to make it, and our roams to low/nullsec were picking up both in numbers and relative success.  Then, disaster struck.  We had planned to abandon the wormhole, it was pushing the focus off of pvp, and required too many of our “Highly Skilled” characters to sit in a wormhole.

However our wormhole had been discovered by Snatch Victory, and they were open for business.  They managed to lure both carriers into a fight on the wormhole entrance, despite the pilots being told not to bring the carriers out there, A large fleet battle ensued in which the good guys lost out, one carrier self-destructed and the other was blown up.  While we were able to evacuate most of our things from the wormhole.  For some alliances this would be a death knell.  The wormhole with its carriers was our single biggest asset, and a lifeline for people needing isk.

Without it we were stronger.  The senior leadership was angry more about the carelessness of the carrier losses than the loss of the wormhole itself, and was actually eager to pursue a more active pvp stance.  We rebuilt, rededicated ourselves to our roams and to our training, and debated our next moves.  One idea that struck us was to go hunt people in their wormholes.

And so we did!

By the end of February we had a wormhole thoroughly invested, and we were trying to hunt their carrier.  We were about to hold a meeting of alliance leadership when one of our guys in the wormhole reported their carrier ON the wormhole.  At 0.

Meeting adjourned.

Our fleet collected and raced to the entrance systems, a convenient 20+ jumps from practically everyone.  We rolled our fleet into system, and onto the wormhole, grabbing tackle with a drake, and smashing their fleet while pinning the carrier down.  The carrier was a daunting task.  Most of our DPS was from drones and it was a smartbombing carrier.  We planned on neuting it down, but didn’t have the neuts.  Fortunately the carrier helped our cause greatly by not fitting a local rep.  Our fleet cleared the field and celebrated our biggest win ever.  Things were finally looking up.

What about Major Kong?

Archon Down Video

So MANY moons ago my old alliance, Disciples of Crom killed an Archon in a WH.  This was my first capital kill, and I managed to be awake enough to record it on FRAPS.  Apex Bex of Herotackle fame mentioned the blog post concerning the kill, and I decided that the video has been sitting unseen by the masses for too long.  So here it is.

Archon Down Video (embedding wasn’t working for me)

I'm using it every time I can

HOLY FLEURKING SCHNIT

[EDIT] Replaced dead link with movie link. [/edit]

So I hop on for my alliances weekly meeting.  Its been a rough week.  We have had a lot of stupid losses, some non-participation by key players, myself included, short tempers, some folks going through some REAL tough times in real life.  Just a Piss-poor week by all accounts.

One of our WH spies reports that our hostiles Archon is on the WH in scram range.  Why do people do this?  Its a bad idea.  The carrier can’t get OUT but the hostiles can… easily.  So we start organizing a fleet.  I start beating the drums with friendlies, no dice.  I call PK, no dice (he wanted to but 30j is a long way for a lone carrier)

We get a fleet together.  Drake, Domi, Rapier, Prot (cloakey hidey fit) Falcon, Rapier, Pilgrim, Jag, Ishtar, Blackbird, Onieros.  I know.  Its awful.  Its terrible.  We went for it.  D-scan showed a damnation, two drakes, a Thorax and some stealth bombers wandering about.

Drake warped onto the bubble they had erected on the WH, called point, in come the stampeding herd.

THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT!!!!

We killed the Thorax, podded him, A drake, a Nighthawk warped in, he went down, a kitsune and a manti were next, then another drake.  We were getting hit by bombs.  Including lockbreakers.  Too bad there were two recons holding points.  Our blackbird went down early, that pilot switched to a pilgrim.  The domi swapped to a Hyperion, the Proteus said fuck that I’ll get in the Domi.

The Archon’s cap was holding, so we started DPSing.  Pretty slow since we couldn’t really hit him with drones.  We noticed he wasn’t repping.  My scanner showed a rep on him.  DPS, DPS, DPS, finally he dips into structure.  No reps.  Scan again.  WTF is he doing?  He hits low structure and BOOM!

http://crom.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=8985666

What.  The.  Fuck.

Guardian warps in.  Literally seconds after the carrier goes down.  He dies in seconds too.

We kill the pods.  Scoop the loot.  Exit the area and get back into Empire.

We needed this.  We needed this BAD.  This is the kind of thing that takes a small alliance and galvanizes it.

Ok I’m going to try to get to sleep.  Video should be up tomorrow.

Thanks to BrenDiesel (reactivate your account PUNK!) for the 2nd picture.  Your google-fu is strong.

Thanks to Apex for manning up and getting point

Thanks to KHoweveritsspelled for coming along with RR.  I know KMs aren’t important to you man but you saved us a couple of times.

Thanks to Aeocas for getting us a warpin and putting up with me stepping all over him.

Thanks to HairlessHarry for replacing his ship and getting back FUCKING FAST

Thanks to Vorg for

Thanks to Alexis for being agile

Thanks to Fuji for DPS

Thanks to Star for DPS

Thanks to M’ing for jams, webs

Additional thanks for everyone, I know I’m rusty as hell at FCing and my commands were far from crisp but we got the job done.