Warfare & Tactics

Pull up a sandbag my friend and let me tell you the story of Ourzad. A story of arrogance and over confidence. A story of victory and defeat. A story of friendships lost and regained. A story like the Alamo and 'The 300' where the victor was left decimated and the defeated rose from the ashes like the Phoenix.

Arzad - a one station FW system in low sec Devoid. An Amarr system that was taken by the Minmatar over 2 years ago, before system ownership mattered in FW. Which fought off two serious attempt to retake it since it came to matter. For two years, Arzad was home to the (European centric) Minmatar alliance, "Iron Oxide".

Ourzad!

Like any good story, pride comes before a fall. We were leet and we knew it. We owned FW space, where we roamed the Amarr ran from us. Where they stood and fought, they stood and died. Twice the Amarr fail cascaded and rebuilt only to fail again and Iron Oxide were prominent in each defeat.

In late December of last year, the Amarr were failing as usual and we gained a new corp with a Titan, something we'd been wanting for some time. It would allow us to project ourselves where ever we wanted, to take fights we wouldn't be able to gather in time for. In the first month we dropped everywhere. We dropped on a Kestrel once, on a small gang of SBs another time and certainly on anything bigger than a Cruiser.

Be careful what you wish for! The Amarr added our Titan pilot to their watch list and simply logged when he came online. The warzone became a desert. We spent hours sat on the Titan POS waiting for a drop that never came. We became fat and lazy like so many, so called leet alliances with caps. You know who I mean.

We became bored, complacent, people started to bicker in our ranks. We allied ourselves with some large pirate alliances and stepped up to take some cap fights we had no business taking. We were sub cap specialists and were out of our comfort zone, nevermind our wallet capabilities. We were pwned.

Weazls broke from our alliance and FW. They left for Molden Heath to become pirates and took around a third of our numbers. With them went our most prominent FC and our logistics wing in particular was decimated. The Amarr giant stirred in his high sec hideaway and took note.

We were left with some good FCs, but we stumbled in the dark, uncertain which direction to take. Waited for things to settle, returned to small gang warfare in FW but lacked focus. For a month we never dropped from the Titan, didn't even gather at the Titan POS. A member of the Titan corp became disgruntled and finally moved against us. All did not go according to plan, but the Titan died and the Amarr rejoiced... and gathered their numbers.

The assault on Ourzad began on the 2nd of May. It initially appeared as simply a farming drive for LP. Most of the warzone tends to flip back and forth and the Amarr were definitely on a drive. Usually though only a few cheeky ones actually have the nerve to hit on the home systems like Ourzad.

However, by the 10th of May it was clear a more organised drive was going on and a CTA was called. The Amarr have always been strong in the late US/Aussie timezone and were pressing hard during that period. Each morning they would drive the system to 20-30% contested and we would plex it back in the evenings. Then their fleets started appearing in our peak time, in surprisingly large numbers. The Amarr had always had the numbers, but not the quality and we were used to slaughtering them. We leeroyed in, but for once found them competently led. While we won some, we lost others and our losses were not consistent with our perceived level of leetness. We attempted to raise our game and while our successes improved we still struggled to keep the system contestation levels down, although we survived the weekend when the Amarr were at their most strongest.

As the week of the 13th May began the Amarr changed their tactics. They had been pressing both Ourzad and it's neighbouring system Tararan. Tararan was home to our feeder corp Oxide Nation, but this corp had been hard hit by the leaving of Weazls. Their CEO was a Weazl alt and the corp had effectively been abandoned while we had all dithered. The Amarr temporarily abandoned their drive on Ourzad to concentrate exclusively on Tararan, they set up a death star in the system and brought in hundreds of reships. For four days glorous battles raged. Late Night Alliance, another Minmatar FW alliance came over to help us out in the US timezone. But it was all to no avail. Tararan fell on Thursday the 16th and the Amarr giant turned back to it's real goal, Ourzad.

I pull no punches. Panic reigned in Iron Oxide. There were calls to abandon Ourzad and run for Huola, turtle up with LNA. The weekend was upon us when the Amarr were at their most dominant, they had hundreds, we had 25 regulars. It would be gone before the weekend was over the defeatists were crying.

LNA rallied to our call, the Weazls came back and the Heretics (the good ones) came to our aid. Somehow we survived the weekend. But at 57% contested, the Amarr went into overdrive determined to take it from us during the week of the 20-24th.

An emergency meeting was called within Iron Oxide. It was decided, we were too small in number and too isolated to remain in Ourzad. However, we couldn't be seen to just give up and run. We were going to fight to the end, it was no longer about the system, it was about the pew, we were going to make the Amarr pay in blood, fight for every plex...

A nice write up with one very big mistake:

The invasion of Ourzad from the iWhip point of view started when a new FC in-the-making asked the question:
Can we take a Minmatar Stronghold? Can we use DUSTies to our advantage?
This has rarely been done before because in previous months the Minmatar EU / Russian TZ would plex in back up again.
So plans were made, DUST corps contacted, logistics moved (and hardly not billions) timetables planned and FC's announced.
We had everything planned for a 72 hour invasion and fights.
It didn't last even 48 hours and no proper fights.


It was short because the DUSTies did a great job taking almost every district.
No fights is more a complaint to the entire Minmatar militia, they had one right there, but never took it.

Good write up. I'm sure it will derail quickly so one quick point:

1) LP store could use some 'tools' to protect your system during off peak hours. You described our experience when Siseide or Dal fell with Euro plexers vs our US TZ.

PIE and a caldari corp I forget the name of were hitting it hard starting on the day we captured Tararan. It's pretty devastating.

I mean we know we are all a bunch of scrubs, terrible at pvp, broken with a 99% chance of failcascading ,and all that jazz. But what we don't know is why you continue to preach this after you left faction warfare. I'm sure this is part of your master blue-ball plan and you'll spin some epic yarn about how "you didn't want that system anyways" and "we let you have it blueballs lelel" or "we could take it back at any time". If anyone is broken it is you.

You failed to get your medal

Your titan is no more

You've been kicked out of your homeland

And now you've left the war


GG Iron Oxide you've managed to win Faction Warfare.

Calm down and think for a second. Its easier to move assets when you're allowed in the station.

You don't have to move your stuff if you manage to keep the system or earn it back, and you seem pretty confident you'll get it back . Why not just buy a couple cruisers, frigs, and dessies? You managed to slaughter hundreds of Amarr ships with only a handful of ships surely you don't need all your things to get your system back!

?
You fought the Saht guys and could barely defend Arzad for maybe a week. Then came fweddit and helped us and you lost it within a few days.
Nothing pathetic.
Btw: Yeah "minmatar fought outnumbered". Vey funny. You had maybe 24/7 three ogb while we even lacked mostly one^^.

Edit: Come back you butthurts. Ah... yes I know you need to learn eve anew because you are used to have superior numbers.
Well that is the problem when you had superior numbers over all the years and don´t have any more you need to adapt. Learn to fight outnumbered. We did it over a year and weren´t even half as butthurt like you are after some weeks^^

I keep seeing the Minmatar saying we're mad, but I really don't see anyone getting mad about taking Arzad. Please, stop projecting what feelings you wish we were feeling onto us.

Also I'd like to point out that this is a total mischaracterization of the situation. Iron Oxide did not fight to the last ship, and the Amarr certainly are not left decimated after our victory.