EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

The Amarr champion ship was announced during the Alliance tournament this year. As normal I was watching the stream when this happened. I have always had an interest in participating in a large events like this, but haven’t had the chance. I once patriated in a small player held tournament in a 2v2 frig set up (in which I went 1-1), and I guess if you could count the two AT practices I attended just after joining exodus. When I heard that this was happening I was hoping I might get my chance and as it turns out I did! Believe me when I say I was ecstatic! To be completely honest I was hounding the forums, blogs and my eve mail the week it was to be announced, I got the mail while I was at work. It would be a bit of an understatement to say I wasn’t excited. I nearly tripped over a piece of PVC pipe while I was basically jumping up and down, Embarrassing or not it’s what happened (lol). I had an idea of who I wanted on my team so I started getting them together as soon as I got home.

Once I got my team together we all got together to sit down and talk. Being not all of us had flown together before we thought it would be a good idea to do that, be it some sort of practice or on TQ. We wanted some sort of team dynamic and to be comfortable with each other. We planned to do this like 1-2 times a week at first maybe more once it got closer to the tournament. During this time we only got together once. I was the major contributor to this, as my job got busy and I was working a lot of O.T., however others were also guilty; but basically that didn’t happen. The only practice/ try out of our teamwork and execution was Friday and Saturday before the tournament.

Going into Sunday we knew we had two match ups potentially. Our first match up is what we spent most of our time on. Through our discussion we hashed out what we thought would be the best setup. Earlier in the week we had asked anyone and everyone we knew, who could help us practice for the weekend. Friday night we had a bunch of guys from the icebox corporation answer the call (thank you guys! You all know who you are.). We tested a mirror matchup multiple times and came out on top. We had decided not to use jams on our set up, we felt strong without them in that matchup. At this point people started logging off. It was late, I was tired from work and I think this sentiment was reciprocated by the rest of my team as well. We called it a night. The next day we talked a bit more about the choices in the setup and decided there was a comp “b” we wanted to test against. Comp “b” consisted of the same set-up (Oracle, Devoter, Zealot, and Sentinel) except that the sentinel was swapped for a sigil. The sigil could be tanked surprisingly well and had 4 mid slots for jams. We had set up ahead of time to practice with Kelon’s team on Saturday. We practiced a few of their setups and a few of our own, during which we had them field comp “b”. We got ReKt! Literally and figuratively. We clearly needed a rethink; either find a way to beat comp “b” or use it. At this point we just switched to our second matches setup as we just wanted a break form that fight. So we went to four slicers. I think initially most people would just say well it’s a slicer I guess you have a choice of pulses or beams and just stick a t/d on it. Basically bank on being better pilots or bust. I mentioned earlier that my team got together one time, well part of that get together was trying to get ahead of the ball and figure out what ccp might have us fly. During that first meetup we just started spit balling stuff and we decided to work from the ground up starting with t1 frigs which is where we first learned how strong jams were against them (we used magnates during these tests), so I spat out what about a no prop slicer and it seemed we all clicked; and the dual ecm no prop slicer was born [# tournylife]. Basically that was an open and shut book on testing. Now we set back to our first match were we finally decided on an ecm on the oracle to jam a sigil if fielded. It had a 90% success rate (actual numbers may vary); very were fairly confident.

Sunday came and I was all hopped up on coffee for our first match. I went to bed fairly late the night before and woke up an hour before I planned to. The anticipation was killing me. I watched the first match and noticed both teams fielded some form of ecm, but did so with the same ship types we had. No sigil. I really didn’t have time to think about it though we were moved to field shortly after the end of their match. Our game plan was locked. We were all quiet (which is typical of our comms when we’re serious). On the warp in we see an identical set-up to ours. They came in close to us which worked just fine for our game plan. We used our zealot and devoter to burn down there zealot and take him off the field as quickly as possible. Next would be the oracle to take the rest of the damage off the field and mop up. Honestly I felt it went textbook. I spoke with Venix just after the match. He informed me he burnt out his plate. I previously didn’t think it was really possible to do that, but after looking at his kill mail he should have taken more damage. We also noticed that their Zealot had fit a 5mn micro warp which gave him zero chance of running; especially when you consider we fielded a whole lot of web drones. I felt this took away from our win partially but I also felt our comp and plan were sound. It would be nice to see the match played out again

So in any event we moved forward. We were way more confident about our second set up. Our slicer fit locked to 60 some odd km I think, had a 400 plate, beams and 2 ecm’s. The ecm’s were extremely effective in testing. We figured at worst it would be a mirror. We landed on field at range. Our plan was to sit there and see what they would do at first. They were also beam fit. The match started and all of us besides Danmal stayed put.

. Our thoughts on the sacrilege was hitting resist holes. And the heretic should be able to kill a frig or keep the confessor off him. Worst case would be a heretic vs heretic fight. The match starts and Lucian in their devoter starts burning in at us. We drop web drones to get him to slow down, while we start laying into him. We have t/d’s on there apoc so he can apply to us at all. At the same time we start burning away myself in the harb in the opposite direction of the napoc. They decide to come after me first. Maxine in the confessor starts shooting off the web drones. At this point we have the devoter into half armor or less, without taking any significant damage. Wasa QC was trying to chase in the Navy geddon but had given up and started chasing torei in the napoc. This is interesting to note because it helped seal my fate. At this point I start running out of room my hope was to eventually get to the mjd beacon and get away from the devoter. However the web drones were shot off and I dint heat my prop mod as much as I should have. By the time I reached it I was worried about getting scrammed so I started making a beeline across the back of the arena towards torei. I was so focused on Lucian I didn’t notice where wasa was positioned. As I’m running across the back I get scrammed but we sling past each other and I quickly over heat my mwd and turn it on. Unfortunately I was heading straight into wasa’s path. This move here was the match decider. If I had burnt upwards instead of across, there may have been a different outcome.

At 7:40 on the clock the Devoter was near death. At 6:50 I’m dead. This defeat burned. Not just myself but the team. Previously we had wrote it off as a loss. But not because of player error. This was extremely demoralizing for myself. Another spot in time that is in contention for my lowest low.

Before I go through the rundown of our second match, I would like to state this was the second of only two matches to go to time this weekend, and also the only match to be decided by a tie breaker in the entirety of the tournament.

Our second match of the day was vs the Kahnid team led by Dammasys Kadesh. We felt that it wasn’t the comp that lost the previous match, but my play mistake. The bans went the same as the first match. Go is given in local and we start moving. All except Danmal that is who is slow to react in this match. Kadesh’s team picks up on this, and primaries him. He is promptly wiped off the field. We start trading blows. Both teams locked on each other’s Harb. Again we are fighting through links. On our side we went with web drones again as we used them to great effect in our last match (and I must say throughout the tournament as well). On their side they had rep drones. We had considered rep drones before but only 1 pilot could use the t2 variant, we felt web drones would have a better affect. I also want to note all of our tracking disruption was on our heretic. We opted for tracking computers on the Apoc and harbinger. As we’re trading blows I’m slowly losing. I hang on to make it to the mjd beacon just after Kadesh loses a confessor, I get a bit out of there range. At the same time our web drones start catching up to the sacrilege. They put rep drones onto the sacrilege while shooting of our web drones. We get him into low armor before our devoter gets on top of him. At this point I was moving closer to get some damage on to try and finish the sac. They recognize this and switch to me immediately. I happened to be near an mjd beacon and burned to it. I activated it trying to get away and made it that far. Unfortunately I just wasn’t far enough away. POP. We now have Navy apoc and Devoter to their Navy Apoc, Navy harbinger, Sacrilege. Torei and Elana finish off the sac. Kadesh and co are laying into our Napoc. The Harb must have come in close to get more damage on because Elana is able to hard tackle him shortly after the sacrilege goes down. They navy Harb and our napoc are going down at the same rate. Neck and neck, all the way. Kadesh goes down first followed shortly by Torie. Now left on the field is their Navy apoc and our Devoter. Elana quickly scrambles to get in close to get under his guns. As he is moving in he’s taking a bunch of damage, and Reppyk in the apoc tries to mjd away so Elana can’t get under his guns. Elana makes it in time to stop that, and proceeds into a tight orbit with 1:20 on the clock. Basically this goes to time and all the way through the overtime. During this time Reppyk skills Elana’s web drones to try to get a better transversal. Something else to note was Elena’s cap management he only had 3 charges in his hold.

The first tie- breaker is highest potential dps at the start of the match. To quote : {In the very unlikely case that a fight is tied after 15 minutes, the victory will be awarded to the team that had more collective potential team DPS at the beginning of the match, as measured by the tournament automated “attack bar”. } end quote. The numbers announced in local were 800 something for us and 1100 something for them. We were a bit taken back by this. I could discuss this a bit, as well as the implications of AT rules vs Amarr championship rules, but in the grand scheme of things it was the rule. I also want to point out here I did ask for an explanation of how the tool worked at this point and may have been patronizing. Although I don’t feel it was accusative, I still feel a bit shameful of my actions. I want to say I’m sorry to ccp Logibro (who bared the brunt of it) and Mimic. It now feels really un-sportsman like. I hope you don’t think less of me in the future. I also want to say Good fight to Kadesh and co. It clearly went the distance and I think it was our toughest match of the tournament. It was a well-earned win.

The match with Sarum inched us ever so closer to Iceland it was a good confidence restorer in our theory crafting, perception and ability. However there was still the match with Hard Knocks and Sarum needed to win at the end of the day. Although I should note if we won our match vs lysis’s team they would be out of contention. Their match only being the decider of weather us or Damassys’s team would take the second spot. I’m not trying to say they would through it on purpose but I wasn’t sure how hard they would try to win. Our thoughts now are that we didn’t spend enough time contemplating our match with lysus’s team. We had assumed they would want to brawl and we decided to meet them head on if this was the case. We would ban the Damnation and heretic and bring a sentinel again. They banned the Pilgrim and the Curse. We landed on field with a navy geddon, navy harb, both pulse fit a sacrilege and a sentinel. They brought a mirror with the change of a confessor for a sentinel. Also of note they had links and again we couldn’t field them. Our sacrilege was supposed to land at zero with our harb and geddon behind that but mistakes were made. He warped in at the same range as everything else save me in the sentinel. The match started and their sacrilege was able to tackle our harbinger. We decided to primary there harbinger instead of the sacrilege, I’m personally unsure of whether or not this was the right call and others on my team feel it was the wrong call. I think if anything maybe we should have raced their geddon. We trade slowly on the harbinger and lose our sacrilege before we can kill theirs. With our geddon low in armor it was apparent we lost. I would also like to note rise had commended me in the fight before for flying the sentinel (of course that was against a retri). Just as fozzie is finishing commending me in this match I burn my prop mod out. Mistakes were made (lol). I try slow boating to the mjd beacon but never made it. I would love to try that again any time by the way. Eventually Torei was finished off and our Dreams were completely dashed. In hind sight we accurately predicted they would want to brawl, so why we decided to meet them as opposed to flying our original comp I will never understand. Especially when you consider we don’t have links.

In closing I want to say this has been amazing fun I can’t thank everyone at ccp enough for giving me the chance to do something extremely cool. I want everyone to know my emotions were a roller coaster over the past two weekends, but I am now in high spirits with lessons learned behind me, and I can’t wait to compete in something else again. Oh! and I still get a sweet, sweet, shiny magnate ;). I also want to affirm that I harbor no ill will to anyone that competed in the tournament.

Ps: if you read this far I commend you. I’m not even certain other people will find this interesting, but I felt the urge to write something.

Very interesting seeing another captains side of the tourney. I am writing up our theory crafting/fits/testing but I'll wait to post it until after iceland.

Really interesting, thank you for sharing your experience :)

Really awesome to read what other teams have gone through. We almost had a complete collapse after our 0-2 start