If It's Not Baroque, Don't Fix It!

        I'm going to begin this blog with a singular word that can just about sum up my life in New Eden over the past week or so; amazing. Until recently I felt very stuck in a rut, not with any external issues of course, purely with my own ability as a pilot and my lack of luck in the game we call piracy. The kills had been between long droughts of roaming, the loot drops minimal and ransoms hard to nail down; recently such difficulties have changed in light of my more recent exploits. This is going to be a long one, so let's get the ball rolling.

        It might be common knowledge that the Tuskers and The Bastards have formed an alliance as a means to participate in the upcoming alliance tournaments held officially by CCP. Whilst it's a wonderful endeavour there are some pilots, myself included, whose current skill level (in a purely mechanical basis) are not up to scratch with what is necessary for the main 'team' so to speak. It's frustrating being so unable to help even when it comes to training sessions, skill points and usable ships still being the limiter here. Through this I began to really push what ships I knew I could fly, namely an assortments of Minmatar frigates, to their limits in hope to get some great fights and kills in the process. This began with myself and Kirith often talking about epic frigate roams and the prospect of killing ships miles above our weight class.

Warning; tangent incoming: Fortunately that became a realization today with him taking the helm of a scheduled frigate fleet, with a great write up available here!

        After many conversations on ventrilo I began once more stocking up on an excessive amount of Rifters and taking some chances. A fairly recent recruit to the corporation Valgore Meurte became invested in our conversations also and through that we began going on a series of increasingly successful ad-hoc roams. Not only have they been ridiculously good fun but also pretty profitable (at times) and a great learning experience for me as a fleet commander.

        Two main roams come to mind when I describe all of this. Firstly being the 9 hour long 'Rifter Roam of Epic Doom' that was set up a few nights ago and also a short but incredibly rewarding roam that occurred a few hours before Rob's scheduled roam that was in itself a hell of a lot of fun. Bear with me, I'm getting to the good stuff!

        So after a true Rifter roam with Valgore and Balsakian, which eventually escalated into a mixed culture roam; kills such as this and this, myself and Valgore decided to once more try our luck in no man's land. We kitted up, pulled together a rag tag crew of fellow pirates and promptly flew in whichever direction took our fancy. This just so happened to be the Heimatar region, which as all pilots in New Eden know, is a hot bed of non-consensual combat. Initially we all brought out fairly standard ships but after a well-fought fight with myself losing a Rifter we all somehow ended up in faction and tech 2 ships of all shapes and sizes.

        Two hours and a couple of kills later, we somehow ended up falling on top of an outlaw pirate sporting a Vagabond. Whether through luck, skill on my behalf or sheer foolishness on his, I actually managed to put a scrambler onto his ship in my afterburner brick-of-a-ship Wolf. Crazy, I know. We made fairly quick work of the vessel, only to proceed to freak out as a rather intimidating fleet of battleships, battlecruisers and HAC's decided to spoil our fun. Leo unfortunately lost an Ishkur after bravely taking down an Enyo in the midst of the fight, with Valgore doing some herioc loot thieving from the wrecks that lay strewn outside the station which hosted the brawl. End result: Republic Fleet Warp disruptor, which has been my single best loot drop to this very day. I was indeed a proud man.

        A trend of finding ridiculously big targets and Leo getting primaried every time continued through the night as we tore our way into the heart of low-sec Heimatar. In Siseide alone we claimed these absolutely wonderful kills; pow! bish!? Kablamo!! We eventually succumbed to the unavoidable fate that is downtime, but not before taking on a Rupture and Drake in our final stand against incredibly angry locals in Siseide. Oh, Kitsunes are awesome by the way, it saved our hides in that fight, over and over again. Way to go Lncog!

        With the roam coming to a close we all parted ways and I took the time to catch some sleep, who knew being a pirate would be so tiring. Later in the day I jumped back on, about 2 hours before Robert Mason's scheduled op and was for some odd reason immediately tagged as fleet commander and thrown out of the station to lead an impromptu roam. Fortunately luck was on my side as we caught a Ferox in a belt only 2 jumps from Hevrice, suffice to say he did not last long. The next fight that I managed to pull ourselves into was perhaps the best fight I've had in a while. Here is the after action report; fun times. It would be nearly impossible to describe quite what occurred during the fight as I can barely remember, the adrenaline that pummelled me into submission as I called out targets, kept tabs on our pilot's well-being and allocating points across the board. I was assured that i performed admirably though by a few of my fellow Tuskers, so I can take great solace in this, even if the Punisher did get away!

         Since these events I've been flying to decent success in both solo and group combat and I'm thanking the Tuskers (secretely) on a daily basis for allowing me to join their ranks when I did. Thanks to those that somehow don't mind me commanding them across the far reaches of space, especially when you consider that I, in my friend Arrhidaeus' words, am 'freaking hysterical but kind of all over the place at times'. Here's to more great fights in the months to come.