A Murder Of Crows

Last night I FC'd an SHC 'Ganknight'. Now, normally the first rule of ganknight is that you... actually that's not a rule, I'm just trying to make shit pop culture reference. Essentially it's a themed roam organised by the Scrapheap Challenge community where pilots of all races, corps and creeds come together and run an NPSI (Not Purple Shoot It) roam, usually into deepest nullsec.

We invariably die in a fire.

The theme for GN 25.25 was Crows. Lots and lots of Crows. Now, the Crow has a special place in my heart, it's pretty much the ship I learned to PVP in and I even made a terrible PVP video back in the day.

So we formed up in Bosena ready for a 21:30 start off. Gang format was going to be Long Range Crows>>>Tackle Inties>>>Dictors (With a Skirmish Loki for beautiful bonus').



After spending ten minutes or so shaking the gang out we set off and made it a few jumps before we spied a Hurricane on our out gate. Being in paper thin ships and this still being Lowsec I gave the order to hold. One brave Crow decided to agro the Cane anyway. He was rapidly delaminated by the gate guns.

Man Down

At this point the Hurricane seemed to be overcome with some temporary palsey and decided to agro on of us. He was taken out in short order.

From there we hit 7Q-8Z2, a 0.0 entry system into GW. Scouts had some guys tackled in bubbles on the gate so we piled in and gave them a bloody nose . Big shout out to Rampant Basttard who died hero tackling a Drake while swarmed with Warrior IIs.

We pushed onward, getting a few ganks along the way and coming across two drakes battling one another in EOA-ZC. There was some confusion when mid warp I asked for the scouts to call a primary for us to shoot on landing.
'Primary is Primary in the Drake'
'Yeah mate I know but there's two Drakes, which one do we primary?'
'The drake, primary!'
'YEAH BUT WHICH ONE?'
'No, the pilot is called Primary.'
'Oh, right, primary when you land is Primary'

I must say calling yourself something like that is a real dick move and contributed to my ulcer no end.

From there we headed to UBX-CC, ganking somewhat along the way. In UBX we found some Violent Entity guys sitting outside of a jumpbridge POS. We smashed a couple of dudes on the outside of the shield before the rest popped back in. By maintaining high speed and transversal we were able to avoid the damage of the POS guns, right up until my arc took me into the path of two guns and I exploded. Fortunately Cyber Ten heroically gave me his Malediction so I could continue to lead the fight. Using immense metagaming abilities we accessed open source documents and gained entry to the POS forcefield and attempted to bump some guys out. Fortunately many of them came out of their own accord and were slaughtered piecemeal.

We took a break in FDZ4-A and just after we started moving out the Violent Entity posse were spotted again behind us. They somehow thought that smartbombing battleships would work well against long range inties. Unfortunately several of our number didn't quite get the concept and died. However, we won the ISK war.



After that we headed to BWF-ZZ and over the course of around three quarters of an hour mauled Brick Squad forces on the Oijanen gate. After trying desperately to hit us with smartbombing BS (special mention goes to Lady Spank for trying to blind a Maelstrom pilot by exploding right in front of him), high tracking battle cruisers and, bizzarly, solo stealth bombers they finally formed up around twenty or so dudes in a battle ball of fast tracking vessels being tracking linked and repped by scimitars. Despite almost killing a Tempest before reps managed to stabilise on him I called a regroup and we got out. Though Brick Squad had been a worth opponent I decided not to give them any free kills. I called for a retreat and we headed off... Our enemy broken, defeated.

Good Fight Brick Squad.

At this point we called it a night. We'd been on the go for almost four hours and out of our initial 70 vessels I reckon we'd lost 30 over the course of the night, either through dying or not having the stamina to keep up with this epic roam.

Thanks to all who attended, was the most fun I've had playing Eve for a while.

Special shout outs go to:

Pandora SC for being a good booster (despite being INIT)
My scouts: ROXGhengis, Lyyraia, Jalif, Cyber Ten, Don Pellegrino, Rampant Basttard and a few others I'm sure.
Sofail Roseburn
Ralara
High Sierra
inSpirAcy