Warfare & Tactics

Chapter 25 The Lion and the Elephant

The transition into Imperial Outlaws was a smooth one. Many old and familiar faces in that corp. For an old timer like me it really was the right choice. I was pleasantly surprised going through the corporation forums to see the amount of dedication and work Shalee has put into it keeping it organized. If you go through enough corporations in EVE you can tell the ones that have a lot of love put into them as far as infrastructure, chain of command and logistics. It was no wonder this corporation and Alliance has been with the Amarr since long before I even became one. It has been and I for one hope it will always be a bright star in the Amarrian constellation.

As far as the pilots in Imperial Outlaws you pretty much have a solid mix of veterans that know what they are doing so I wasn’t worried I was going to pull my hair out in fleet with any of them because they didn’t know what to do and when to do it mid engagement. Good pvp’ers kind of feed off of each other mid fight and knowing I has some experienced pvpers on my side was a relief.

Another aspect of Imperial Outlaws I highly admired is that there is a large group of pilots in it that I refer to in EVE as ‘solo artists’. There is never a shortage of amazing killmails being posted in corp chat and it keeps pushing you to want to perform better if for no other reason to at least be able to keep up the standards.

Additionally and if you did not see it coming they have an amazing FC in Almity. Easily the second best FC I flew under when it comes to large fleets he can and does handle the pressure well. For someone that has never FC’ed you have to understand the million calculations an FC does every minute. Everything from calculating range, to estimating the speed of his fleet as opposed to the opposing fleet and just a million little things that go through one’s mind and for that one must tip his hat to Almity. He does it in a cool calm collected way that really keeps the emotions in check mid fight. If you want to see what I mean in comparison I am sure a short search on youtube will net you a ton of nullsec fleets with terrible FC’s screaming and heavy breathing and just being terrible to the fleets’ morale.

So in essence what you have in Imperial outlaws is a perfect synergy between the ability to have some friendly inner corp competition on who can pull off the best solo kills when you felt like closing comms and just cranking out your favorite music while roaming around plexing or whatever, as well as access to quality fleets with solid SP pilots a solid doctrines.
Speaking of doctrines they have a few up their sleeve and if you find yourself too busy during the week to go shopping for a replacement ship etc. Shalee makes sure there are a good number of doctrine ships prefit and ready to rock in the station on corporation contracts.

In short being in InExile is being in the Lions den as far as Amarr corporations go and flying with them is akin to being in a Pride of Lions, you’re the top predator in Amarr militia but without all the highs stress of ‘MUST PLEX NOAW!’ that I got so accustomed to in Amarrian Vengeance.

Pressure to do things is kept to a minimum and all they really ask is to be able to have a doctrine ship or two on hand for when it’s go time and really isn’t that what should be expected of any good pilot?

Another aspect of EVE I was slowly introduced to with ILAW was the role-playing element. They have some good role-players and role-playing content is available for all the faithful Amarr if you want it.

Chapter 26 Saints and Sinners

This is the kind of stuff I hate about tiers 3 and 4 right here. Targets become scarce and our space gets crowded with leeches that really **** is all off.

I mean here I am bleeding my wallet dry on ships trying to capture systems to upgrade just enough to at least be able to reimburse the money spent on bringing it up to tiers 2 and 3 and here comes this tiny punisher into my plex. You pull up corp info and he was in TLF not one month ago. In other words this guy is the reason you were kept in such a low tier to begin with for so long and here he comes put put putting into my plex. Yah dude you best believe I’m shooting you and telling you exactly when you left EPTA as per your corp history while I’m doing it.

Our glorious Kin Jung Pocket gets really edgy around tiers 3 and 4 because there is no one really to channel all our rage into. So wardecs fly and Kim Jung Pocket Becomes Flyingdecpocket. And hey, if FHP is going to give me another guy to shoot at when all I see are farmers all the better.

BUT, (and this is an entirely personal opinion), I really dislike shooting at people that were at one point in time or the other in the same fleet as I was. Something Something sharing that manly bond on the battlefield something something blood sweat and tears something something Amarr Victor. So while I have no qualms shooting some douche that runs around getting his kicks from awoxing legit amarr pilots, or shooting someone that was in TLF not one month before and is now in StatePro or 24th IC, I do have issue with shooting someone like say, Ypsloon, or Mystical Might. It just doesn’t feel right.

Now regarding this little Tristan Incident.

There is little I can add that has not already been mentioned in this excellent article.

But in this particular war I do want to make three things clear here while I have the chance.

1-I found myself seriously on the side of the ILAW-IWHIP-AVNG side of the war because really this was not about a Tristan it was about a common and repeated history by Predator Elite. (more on this in a second)

2-Chesterfield Fancypants, buddy you have to put in a lot more work for the amarr before you start talking like that seriously. Old timers respect people that have been through thick and thin and you really do not understand the repeated history of Predator Elite. (again, more on this in a second)

3-Predator Elite: le sigh dude what can I say. I understand you’re a capital hunter and you will side with anyone to get a capital kill and hey, to each his own knock yourself out go crazy fleet me even I will join your fleets for the occasional Cap Kill

BUUUUUUUUT I won’t shoot an amarr to get it and after all your years in TMFED I really think you shouldn’t either.

Another thing my man seriously, that whole join militia for 3 months thing then drop militia and let your cronies camp the Kamela undock. That poor little 24th IC guy that just got his little arbitrator blown up on the Kamela undock, that poor guy probably saved up three weeks for that Arbitrator and had to haul it down from Amarr in a sigil and was really probably really proud of his ship no matter how crappy the fit was so.....if you’re going to be a big game hunter tell your cronies to act like big game hunters and let the new bros have a fighting chance. Lord knows we in the Amarr Militia need everyone we can get and that kind of pushes away the new blood. I can understand this kind of thing from a nerdy pirate but you’re bigger than that and you know it.

Something Something heavy breathing something something heavy threats in local something something I will crush you with my main in PL something something Amarr Victor.

Now back to the all important business of the Minmatar

To Be Continued…..

I don't remember anyone claiming to be a writer. But hey if you remember events being alot different please by all means go open a thread and write the epic story of the minmatar instead of coming in here and kicking down sandcastles.

Item 1 Ninlarra

I'm sure we'd argue inaccuracies from the FeO "histories" but, it would still be great to read about the experience from your side.

Kreiga FC'ing?? Christ no wonder Arzad took a month to take.

Excellent series of posts Stalking. It obviously needs more focus on Perkin but they brought back some great memories, especially of the defence of Sahtogas and fighting with Ushra in the Aset pocket.

Chapter 27 My Shadow

As you can already tell from the fact that AVNG was part of the whole Tristan debacle; Amarrean Vengeance was back. Slowly but surely the Angels started to log back into EVE as the Amarr coasted from a strong Tier 4 push from Fweddits resurgence back into Amarr FW in May 2013.

As the final quarter of 2013 was coming to an end, wallets were refreshed by a few solid months of Tier 4 and not much resistance was given to the slow swing of the pendulum back to the Minmatar side.

During my 90 day enlistment with the Imperial Outlaws I really enjoyed a lot of large fleet fights in the almost daily Fweddit/InExile fleets. It was good to have large organized doctrine fleets on tap for a change of pace and I kept in touch with the angels through shared intel channels.

It seemed some kind of trouble was never too far off as anything was liable to pop off when jumping onto Fweddits mumble (btw thanks for not making me sing a silly song guys before giving me access to your mumble).

As I mentioned not being pressured into anything in particular in ILAW was a refreshing break from the Arzad campaign and in between fleets I was able to get my solo fix as usual (more often than not getting myself ganked but hey what do you expect in fw).

As 2014 came I found myself more and more missing the one thing I did not have in Egglehende and found myself more often than not on the same comms as Amarrean Vengeance as the gang slowly started crawling out of the woodwork.
The final quarter of 2013/January 2014 also brought a rush of systems changing back to the Minmatar mostly rushed by the ever increasing numbers of Winmatar.

Winmatar recruited heavily and with their Titan started hot dropping every IHUB they could really hampering any general militia Amarr IHUB bashing fleet while mass flipping vulnerable Amarr systems.

Deep down we at Amarrean Vengeance knew what Winmatar was all about. While they might have painted themselves as the true Matari warriors etc. they were all about pushing the Tier levels in their favor to line their wallets and hey, they had the membership numbers and toys to do it.

As the old enemies of the Minmatar (LNA/Iron Oxide) got comfortable in their new home in Houla they became the de facto Minmatar Old Guard. Content with being huddled up and holding down the Houla fortress the Minmatar had a new face that all the new minmatar pilots flocked to.

It was bound to happen really, the day a Winmatar fleet thinks hey cool some Amarrian Vengeance pilots let’s gank em.

With all the forum chest beating Winmatar were doing it was obvious these newcomers did not fully grasp how the FW game works and you knew it was only a matter of time before their overconfidence got the best of them and they stepped on the wrong toes.

By the second week of 2014 it was obvious, who am I kidding really where else in the Amarr militia do I belong? After spending two weeks straight on comms with Amarrian Vengeance It was time to go home. It was time to shed the cowboy hat and six shooter of ILAW and let my shadow back in. It was time this caged lion left the Pride of lions in Egglehende as you can change where you are, but you cant change who you are.

It has been a long time since Amarrean Vengeance did what they love to do and Winmatar kept prodding and poking the hornets nest thinking ‘lol ten man corporation, look at the billions of isk we killed, WE HAVE A TITAN!’

Revenge is an act of passion;
vengeance of justice.
Injuries are revenged;
crimes are avenged.
Samuel Johnson

To Be Continued

Removed a heavily derailing off-topic post. Enjoy and discuss the story please, don't fling mud.

Chapter 29 For God and Empire-The Essin Campaign

As mentioned before the Leadership of Amarrean Vengeance are no fools and while the tactics seem suicidal they are calculated risks. With Anka falling at the sudden Templar Dane onslaught on January 17th 2013 and IWHIP departing the Amarr militia for nullsec we knew we had to strike hard to break a few systems before the Minmatar get a chance to react to the sudden void left by IWHIPS departure to nullsec.

Essin was named as our next target, it was cricual to remove TRIAD from Eszur as the sudden lack of Pressure coming from IWHIP in Egglehende (two jumps from Ezsur) meant it would only be a matter of time before they started fanning out from Ezsur.

The infamous Campagn POS went up in Frerstorn (thereby giving jumpgate access to the whole constellation). With the flurry of AVNG pilots’ plexing Essin for a solid week TRIAD saw the writing on the wall. As shown here in this forum post TRIAD (now with the remnants of Ushra Khan in their fold) wanted nothing to do with Amarrian Vengeance and announced they were ‘leaving’ Eszur and FW on January 27th 2014.

With TRIAD out of the picture this campagn was going to go much faster than we anticipated. Amarrian Vengeance gave up on plexing any system In Essin other than Eszur deciding a quick flip of Eszur was more important than any other system in the Essin constellation.

The combined plexing 1-2 of both Amarrian Vengeance and Shirak Skunkworks ensured Eszur fell. Even though TRIAD (evacuated/didn’t want that system anyway) Eszur, other Minmatar corporations put up a valiant effort among them Minmatar brotherhood and Born Imperialism.

On February 2nd, 2014 Eszur Fell for the first time in any remembered history to the Amarr Empire.

The IHUB bash went smoothly, well almost smoothly as Winmatar tried to stop the bashing fleet in typical Winmatar fashion. I think I will leave that little story for Templar Dane to tell because Templar you earned telling that one.

With Eszur down our sights were set on Bosboger.

We knew it was not going to be easy taking Bosbogur we were going to go up against a 100 man Alliance.

It seems God is on the Amarr side though; because before the dust even settled from the battle of Eszur fate stepped in and gave the Amarr one last divine push. That blessing being to cause the hubris of Winmatar command to not just settle for just upsetting Templar Dane, it decided to step on another set of toes.

To be continued…………..

As I recall, they sent a lone navy aug........and it blew up. The killmail showed a cyno fitted but a lack of ozone in the cargohold.

If they bridged onto our fleet again, I don't remember.

Then preyingmantis01 showed up with a talwar fleet to engage our bombers, and then were spanked by our retributions (again)

[21:04:45] praying mantis01 > gonna need more that retr with inquisitors mate

The highlights of the campaign were trouncing the minnies/frogs over and over, and only getting killed by anslo and his crew. We then spoke with anslo about hitting bosb next and we all set temporary blue standings with..The Scope. Because when the minnies blobbed up, they couldn't cope with The Scope.

That and 3 retributions facing off against 12-15 talwars and owning face.

My hats are off to the gallente pilots that showed up for the defense of eszur, since 95% of the minnies hightailed it out of there when we showed up.

Interlude-Upsetting The Balance

Along the lines of this history a common and recurring theme is obvious to any reader. The hand of fate has been on our side during our campaigns Something about fortune favoring the brave, being faithful, call it what you want but I prefer to call it Miracles.

Small, very well timed Miracles that really push the Amarr forward when they need it the most.

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On February 4th 2014 Maximus Decimal CEO of Biohazard made the below release:

So far 15 corporations have declared war on WINMATAR. Pretty much everyone we thought were our friends have turned their backs on us. I will briefly mention the effort that WMTR has put into the war zone, recently and since we decided '**** the amarr'. We have been taking fleets to almost every hub bash to attempt system saves over the last 2 weeks... some successful and some not so much... lol. We made the initial push to T4 while the militia valiantly maintained it for almost 6 weeks during x-mas/January. Just a couple of things we did... yeah a lot of it was for us... but the militia helped us tremendously and reaped the benefits. When I say militia I mean even some of the corps who have just decced us. I fear the ring leaders of this group of 15 are the same who never left their home systems, farmed with their alts, and coerced others to enter into a conflict with WINMATAR.

We do maintain some close friends who have decided to assist us in this war and we thank you very much. There will be some incredible fights to be had over the course of this conflict. Anyone looking to assist us is welcome, feel free to mail me.

http://winmatar.com/wardecs.png

With the Amarr consistently flipping systems at a steady rate, and taking key systems such as Eszur and Kourmonen. I will mention that instead of attempting to save Kourmonen this evening the 15 entities that have decced us were hunting their fellow militia members. With the Amarr actually quite strong at the moment 15 major corps/alliances have decided to pool over 15billion isk per month, not to mention the fleet hours of quite a substantial number of pilots, into fighting their own. This civil war could potentially mean the end of Minmatar resistance in February, possibly bleeding over into March and April, depending on the extend of this war. No doubt the Amarr will start to focus on retaking much of their sovereign space in the Bleaklands with projections made for much of Heimatar and Metropolis to fall without the support of 15 large militia identities.

WINMATAR. will not surrender. We will continue to fight for the Minmatar Militia. our home and our birthplace. We will not be subject to bullying and harassment by our own. We will fight this war to the last ship. and we will continue to maintain our policies of never wardeccing militia corps, never shooting blues, and remaining free.
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Now I mentioned this before. Although to the outsider FW may seem like a bunch of random fights that have no rhyme or reason over meaningless system control there is an unseen balance at hand here. Upset this balance and the collective in any militia known as the ‘Old Guard’ will step in and amend it.

Winmatar being new to the scene of the Amarr/Minmatar warzone did not understand this balance and unspoken rule as they claimed time and time again that they were the reason the Winmatar were ‘winning’ the war. Somehow this gave a sense of unearned Entitlement as they decided they were the only thing that mattered and everyone was below them.

Not knowing that the fate of Bosbogur was already sealed when Praying Mantis01 decided to taunt us about Sahtogas back in January Winmatar command decided to upset the balance.

Without really adding anything in regards to my opinion about the whole Minmatar Civil war I will just post something I posted back when the Civil war started:
Geee where did I see this story before?

1-Lowsec FW corp gets somewhat large and has a Titan giving it the false impression of being superior.
2-Lowsec FW corp leadership siphons isk from moon goo while passing of some lame (ship replacment program) to members to keep them interested in CTA's (that explains all the meta 0 launchers on Biohazards talwars)
3-Lowsec FW corp leadership thinks because it has titan it is entitled to more than smaller corps (might is right)
4-Lowsec FW corp starts wheeling and dealing with large pirate corporations (see suddenly spaceships, shadow cartel etc.) and starts blueing anyone that might be a threat to there infrastructure
5-Lowsec FW corp starts hotdropping with said blue pirates and gets a sense of (I am the king of the world!!)
6-Everyone in militia starts hating said lowsec fw corp because they start to view them as ego-sadistic
7-Lowsec FW corp finds itself alienated and decides ef it isk isk isk and starts making alts for the opposing militia to fund their capitals
8-???????
9-Lowsec FW corp titan gets hotdropped by PL and or is derped in one fashion or another OR Lowsec FW corp decides they are in the big league and head off to nullsec
I mean feel free to stop me if this starts to sound familiar.
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