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Verge of Collapse: The Story Behind our Tourny

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Royal Jedi
V0LTA
WE FORM V0LTA
#1 - 2012-07-23 22:15:42 UTC
So, after being part of this amazing Team and Alliance, i thought i would do a write up on our journey from an unknown alliance who nobody considered a threat, to Alliance Tournament X Champions.

Firstly, to clarify who Verge of Collapse really are. We were given many names during the tourny such as D00M, Triumvirate etc. While it’s true some well-known members are formally from those corps/allys, simply put, we are a W-Space alliance made up of players from all parts of the game. (Thanks to Raivi for also clearing that up).

There are people who undoubtedly contributed a huge amount to this tourny:

Fatyn <-- MVP-MVP-MVP
Knifee
Taylor
Gnaw

Without these four people this tourny would simply not have been possible. That said, everybody who flew in our team was equally as important and knew their role in the team so well.

Pre Tourny Prep:

So our journey begins...

Our testing started extremely late on. We bought our way into the tournament through the auction and had done no prior testing to this point. We knew we were up against it, but we were confident with the players we had. After hours of getting everything setup we were finally underway.

To start with, we really struggled to get people testing. We were very despondent as we could barely scrape people together to do 6 v 6 testing. But eventually we managed to consistently get 12 people online and developed some really good setups. While we were confident within the 6 man teams, we lacked practice in the 12 man format. Truth be told, we only ever managed to get one 12 v 12 test done for the entirety of the tournament. With a few 10 v 10 tests, and when i say a few, it really was very rare that we were able to test. So many evenings were spent just waiting for people to sign in and often testing would never get done.

Pre Quali:

So as our first match came closer so did the excitement and nerves. We studied Manifest Destiny and watched their previous appearances in the tournament. For some unknown reason though, we found ourselves in their WH before their towers even went online. Odd, we thought.

We were playing on the Sunday and after watching 4 other teams bring our setup we weren’t sure what to make of it. While we were a little worried, we still thought we could beat Manifest with it. We stuck to our guns and it ended up paying off for us, we beat them fairly promptly which resulted in many a tear shed on the forums. To our amazement, they beat their own Tornado setup with the popular Sliepnirs about an hour before our match. Yet, they still chose to field it.

We were super confident in our 2nd 6 man setup and a lot of us wanted to fight a well-known team. We were still an under the radar alliance and we loved that. The CCP gods were obviously smiling on us and we drew Darkside. With them tipped as a favourite for the tournament, everyone immediately wrote us off, everyone but us that was. We had seen from AT9 that when they were happy with a setup they tended to stick to it or a variant of it and we were right. Fatyn, (who came up with pretty much all of our setups) designed a team around a Kronos. With its utility highs it proved invaluable, this coupled with our Sentinel TD’s we were able to offset their DPS and apply our own, allowing us to take the win. This fight was where we realised that the sentinel would be a powerhouse in the tournament. We were all cheering about the fact that we had won and had guaranteed ourselves a spot in the groups. Now the real hard work started.

Groups:

We were stepping into the Unknown; we had minimal testing done and no Intel on any other teams. All we had was some good on paper setups. Our group consisted of Capital Punishment, Goonswarm, Fearless and us. Capital Punishment was our first match and we predicted them to be the weaker team within our group. We greatly underestimated them and it would be a mistake that we would have to pay for. They kicked our ass with their Minmatar setup and all props go to them, we were simply outplayed on that day. Although, we were down, we were by no means out. But it did make our next two matches must win situations. In hindsight the loss did us a favour, it took us down from the high of dominating our prequalifying matches to realising how much work we needed to put in for the next match.

We thought that Goons would be the strongest team in our group much like everyone else did. While they had lost to Fearless we knew they would be up for it, needing a win to keep their tournament alive too. When we landed on field we knew that it would be a brawl and whoever took the first loss would probably lose. Our Sentinels again were key getting TD’s on the DPS and neuts on their logi. This allowed us to down their Vindi first and take the fight scoring us well needed points that we knew would be a deciding factor on the final day of the groups.

We were confident that Goons would beat Capital punishment leaving 3 of us on 1 win each. But this wasn’t guaranteed and with our match right after theirs we had to bring a setup that could win. To keep people guessing our ECM setup was chosen against Fearless. Although, Goons had in fact beaten CP meaning that we had already qualified for the finals we wanted to finish top of our group. With a strong showing we got the win and took full points with no losses. We were in the Finals, we’d exceeded everyone’s expectations and still nobody considered us a threat. That was exactly how we wanted it.
Royal Jedi
V0LTA
WE FORM V0LTA
#2 - 2012-07-23 22:16:21 UTC
Finals:

The Saturday evening we were eager to find out what our side of the bracket looked like. When we saw that our first match was against Rote we knew it would be tough. Listening to the pre studio rundown of our bracket we were tipped as one of the weakest teams, which gave us smile. But we didn’t think Rote would see us as such. We thought they would be concerned about how strong our ECM setup had performed the day before and after chatting with a few of them after our match they had come prepared for it. However, we took a Minmatar rush setup and they bought what everyone would have thought was the exact counter to it. Although they had by far the greater DPS advantage we were one of the teams that utilised the power of EAF’s allowing us to stay on field for much longer. We were able to down one of their Kronos and get another into deep armour by the time our first Sliepnir died before taking down their second Kronos. After that it was just a matter of killing their support and finally finishing their remaining Vindicator. It was a very intense and close fight that could have gone either way, fortunately for us we came out on top.

Next up was Mildly Intoxicated, as previously said we had no Intel on any of the teams we were facing. We bought our Kronos setup while they bought a dual Sliepnir + 3 Gila setup. Our initial thoughts were that we could get on top of their Command Ships and burn down their support. However, our battleships were slow and after dealing with their Sliepnir’s they weren’t able to get on top of anything before they went down. But we still had our Eos and Brutix as well as superior support ships which meant we were able to kill their support and then get on top of two of their Gilas with the final Gila running out of the arena. We were into the Semis and knew the next match meant everything…. Almost.

Exodus was the only team standing between us and the final. We had just watched them beat a strange vindicator setup with two Bhaalgorns, we felt that they might try to field the same setup again and we were confident our Kronos setup could beat it. So we stuck with it, credit to them though they bought a dual Kronos + Vindi team. We had been in this situation with Rote, but this time we too were in a balls-to-the-wall brawling team. This match was going to be tough. We had to take advantage with our superior support fleet getting TD’s on their DPS and hassling their logi long enough to kill one of the Battleships. It was so tense and we traded Kronos for Kronos. But ours managed to hero tank long enough to get their second BS to Low armour. After just managing to take their second Kronos down we were able to tank the Vindi long enough to finish off their remaining ships. We went crazy on comms, wed consistently proved everyone wrong and wed made it to the final. Gf’s were exchanged but we immediately turned our attention to the HUN Vargurs.

It was fairly obvious at this point that HUN would bring their Vargur setup so we had to come knowing we could beat it. We decided we would take our Minmatar Rush team, we knew that we could tank them as we had beaten Rote where they had the advantage of much higher DPS and 90% webs. As we had done throughout tournament we surprised everyone when they counted us out. We traded just a cyclone for their first Vargur and eventually downed a second shortly after our Cyclone went down. We controlled our Ewar on their ships really well and timed our Damp bursts on the Logi during their reload cycles. All three Vargurs were down, we were the ATX Champions.

We switched back from Team comms to our regular server and were gobsmacked at the amount of people in our lobby. We’d struggled to get 24 people on to test but now we had 60+ people on TS to congratulate us on our win.

The Finals will be a day that I will personally never forget for as long as i play EVE. We had so many crazy close fights, especially against Exodus in the semi-finals. For me that was the fight of the tournament, although I’m bound to be biased. I’ve never been in such a close fight that was so back forth until the end. Again, thanks to everyone who was in the team, our opponents, CCP and everyone that watched. I hope our fights were as enjoyable and intense to watch as they were to be a part of.

See you all next year.

TEAM BEATS!
StarFleetCommander
V0LTA
WE FORM V0LTA
#3 - 2012-07-23 22:50:26 UTC
That was all spot on jedi, coudlnt have done a better job myself :)Cool
Captain S04p
Perkone
Caldari State
#4 - 2012-07-23 23:02:24 UTC
Spot on!

Cheers to all.
Bernie Nator
Seal Club Six
Plug N Play
#5 - 2012-07-23 23:26:23 UTC
Was nice that you chilled in our pub channel to keep us up to date. Great work again bud, and congrats again to VoC!
Darek Castigatus
Immortalis Inc.
Shadow Cartel
#6 - 2012-07-23 23:40:37 UTC
congratulations, hope to see you again next year.

Pirates - The Invisible Fist of Darwin

you're welcome
Omen Nihilo
Omen Holdings
#7 - 2012-07-23 23:56:40 UTC
Very nice write-up. No one deserved that spot more than you guys, and I've never been more proud to be a w-space dweller.

I rooted for you guys from the beginning, and the constant underestimation of VoC was quite entertaining. :D
Ophey Won
Inviolable
Omnivores
#8 - 2012-07-24 00:11:25 UTC
Good Job VoC
Rroff
Antagonistic Tendencies
#9 - 2012-07-24 00:42:58 UTC
Royal Jedi wrote:

We controlled our Ewar on their ships really well and timed our Damp bursts on the Logi during their reload cycles


Was the little details like this (and the hero hull tanking) that made your matches so intense to watch (and probably a lot of the reason you did so well).
Starbuck Raider
Perkone
Caldari State
#10 - 2012-07-24 00:44:59 UTC
Good write-up dude, and the one I've been waiting for.

Your guys' WIN is actually way more epic than I had previously considered it to be. That being said, there are some groups who will never, not for one minute, believe you didn't do any testing (which getting in only a few 12v12 fights effectively equates to). If you don't crash your chosen setups into all of the likely counters at least a dozen times, then, sayeth the holy scriptures of tourno-doctrine, you shouldn't bother turning up, for there's simply no chance of advancing past the mid stages.

You guys did it in style. But you're from w-space, and so it's only amongst the Derp that this is of any surprise Blink

Congrulations to all at VOC.
Royal Jedi
V0LTA
WE FORM V0LTA
#11 - 2012-07-24 01:25:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Royal Jedi
Starbuck Raider wrote:
Good write-up dude, and the one I've been waiting for.

Your guys' WIN is actually way more epic than I had previously considered it to be. That being said, there are some groups who will never, not for one minute, believe you didn't do any testing (which getting in only a few 12v12 fights effectively equates to). If you don't crash your chosen setups into all of the likely counters at least a dozen times, then, sayeth the holy scriptures of tourno-doctrine, you shouldn't bother turning up, for there's simply no chance of advancing past the mid stages.

You guys did it in style. But you're from w-space, and so it's only amongst the Derp that this is of any surprise Blink

Congrulations to all at VOC.


As far as thats concerned im not fussed if people believe it or not. But anyone in our team will tell you that we had no where near the amount of testing done that we should have. We never had a testing partner like many other teams. While we may have rarely got any 12 v 12s done we bloody tried and came up with other ways to get stuff done.
Rengas
AQUILA INC
Verge of Collapse
#12 - 2012-07-24 01:48:39 UTC
Starbuck Raider wrote:
Good write-up dude, and the one I've been waiting for.

Your guys' WIN is actually way more epic than I had previously considered it to be. That being said, there are some groups who will never, not for one minute, believe you didn't do any testing (which getting in only a few 12v12 fights effectively equates to). If you don't crash your chosen setups into all of the likely counters at least a dozen times, then, sayeth the holy scriptures of tourno-doctrine, you shouldn't bother turning up, for there's simply no chance of advancing past the mid stages.

You guys did it in style. But you're from w-space, and so it's only amongst the Derp that this is of any surprise Blink

Congrulations to all at VOC.


It was my understanding that Exhale. have always considered VoC to be a k-space alliance.

Even going so far as to make a special note of it on your published kill statistics.

Therefore I'd be pleased to consider ourselves one of the Derped :)
Tayllor04
Unforeseen Consequences.
Valkyrie Alliance
#13 - 2012-07-24 08:07:09 UTC
Enjoyable read Jedi,

It was a massive team effort and I'm proud to be part of V.O.C

If I ever hear on coms 'testing time' I will disband us Lol

Much love to our guys and our opponents.
StoneCold
Decadence.
RAZOR Alliance
#14 - 2012-07-24 08:56:18 UTC
good read, nice show!

My true stories
SupaFlyTNT
V0LTA
WE FORM V0LTA
#15 - 2012-07-24 09:08:05 UTC
Royal Jedi wrote:


There are people who undoubtedly contributed a huge amount to this tourny:

Fatyn <-- MVP-MVP-MVP
Knifee
Taylor
Gnaw

Without these four people this tourny would simply not have been possible. That said, everybody who flew in our team was equally as important and knew their role in the team so well.



So much this ^^

Nice writeup Jedi - Hell of a ride gents o7 Smile
Royal Jedi
V0LTA
WE FORM V0LTA
#16 - 2012-07-24 15:21:13 UTC
Cheers dudes! Was a hell of a ride, indeed!
Faffywaffy
Fremen Sietch
Evasive Maneuvering.
#17 - 2012-07-24 20:10:58 UTC
In our match against VoC, we were moved into the tournament system with all shield transfers offline on our scimi. When we asked in local, we were told that there is no stopping the clock for the start of the match.

Not to say that the result would have necessarily been different, but the resulting atmosphere in our team was a big factor in the list of mistakes we made during that match.
Mrs Curtain
#18 - 2012-07-24 20:23:28 UTC
Faffywaffy wrote:
In our match against VoC, we were moved into the tournament system with all shield transfers offline on our scimi. When we asked in local, we were told that there is no stopping the clock for the start of the match.

Not to say that the result would have necessarily been different, but the resulting atmosphere in our team was a big factor in the list of mistakes we made during that match.



Why have you left out the amount of time you had before the match started in Jove space to but your transfers online?

Why don’t you be gracious in defeat you jumped up Filofax, you could clearly see you were fighting a superior fleet. You lost to the champs which is something you have failed to do for how many years?

So many jealous kids on here these days, no wonder you lose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls
Karah Serrigan
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#19 - 2012-07-24 20:49:55 UTC
Mrs Curtain wrote:
Faffywaffy wrote:
In our match against VoC, we were moved into the tournament system with all shield transfers offline on our scimi. When we asked in local, we were told that there is no stopping the clock for the start of the match.

Not to say that the result would have necessarily been different, but the resulting atmosphere in our team was a big factor in the list of mistakes we made during that match.



Why have you left out the amount of time you had before the match started in Jove space to but your transfers online?

Why don’t you be gracious in defeat you jumped up Filofax, you could clearly see you were fighting a superior fleet. You lost to the champs which is something you have failed to do for how many years?

So many jealous kids on here these days, no wonder you lose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Because everyone knows what the scimitar lacks is the needed fast cap recharge time to online all these mods Roll
Faffywaffy
Fremen Sietch
Evasive Maneuvering.
#20 - 2012-07-24 21:02:26 UTC
Because everyone knows that when something as unexpected as this happens in an extremely high-pressure environment, everyone involved is 100% calm and knows exactly what to do.

Because you know our scimitar fit and how long it takes to recharge its cap to 95%.

Because you know exactly when our scimi pilot noticed the issue.

Because he had no other issues when he was transferred to the tournament system.

Because you know how much time passed between us landing in the system and the start of the match.

Because you're not an idiot who thinks he knows everything better than everyone else.
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