AAR 4/20/2012

Entry: eight hundred thirty-five.

Two fights worth talking about here, both proceeded by a lucky gank on pirate who loves to kill cyno frigates. Note to the wise, if this guy is hanging around, bait him out.




Fight Number One:
 
A corpmate was bringing a Maelstrom in from Perjola to Maila, the alliance's new staging system. I called it clear seconds before a Darkside Loki landed and jumped through. Presumably, the Loki pilot saw my corpmate Harbinger Terror land on the Maila gate, thus explaining his jumping back into Maila. Since we had two Hurricanes and a Curse on the gate, we felt we could protect HT. After HT jumped in and attempted to warp, the Loki engaged HT and webbed him down.
 
I called for fleet to attack the Loki, HT to burn to gate and jump back to Perjola. The Darkside Loki was extremely heavily tanked, however, and in the time it took us to take down his shields another DS Loki and two Guardians with him landed. An Against All Authorities Loki landed as well. The two guardians were not DS, but presumably part of a friendly corp with DS.
 
When the Guardians arrived, I called deaggression and ordered the fleet to the gate. DS, seeing that we planned to jump out, primaried me. The two Lokis were not able to apply enough damage to my standard Whelp Cane before I jumped out with thirty percent structure.
 
Seeing the Guardians come on field, I knew that we had no chance to kill the Lokis on field. With at least six remote armor reppers on even a shield tanked Loki, I had strong doubts we could kill anything. Even taking out one of the two Guardians would have been very difficult. I think I made the right call, especially as the Triple A Loki didn't engage the DS gang with us. All said, I think I made best call possible given my gang and the enemy gang.




Fight Number Two:
 
Took two Hurricanes and a Curse into Geminate. As we got close to BWF- I learned that the same DS gang was waiting on the other side of the low-sec null-sec gate. Not wishing a slow death, I decided to turn the gang around and enter null-sec via EOA-. EOA- was surprisingly unmonitored, as my previous experience had told me EOA- was good place to get killed.
 
With nothing to kill there, we took a few stargates to TJM- and then UBX-. After sticking around on the UBX- gate, getting myself plinked by a WhelpNado at seventy kilometers in AD-5B, we moved to TJM- for a short bit, where a warp stabbed Hurricane slipped by us despite our attempts to force him to bounce between gates. We moved back to the UBX- gate after that. I jumped into AD-5B and aligned to the stargate the Tornado was on scan at, and attempted to set up at seventy kilometers, expecting the Tornado to come in at seventy kilometers again.

The Tornado did come at seventy kilometers, but I had overshot the spot and ended up twenty kilometers away from him. I was unable to close the twenty to twenty-eight kilometer distance as he kept me pointed and kited me, so I called in the gang and aligned away from him. Just my gang decloaked, the enemy fleet came on grid. I ordered a warp out, and we all got away from that safely. I had thought nothing of eight neutrals in system given that there was a station in system; I had expected them to be all docked up.

We bounced around for a bit, before eventually trying to escape. We were unable to pull them apart in any meaningful way, as they had two Rapiers, two Cynabals, a Tornado, and two other ships I didn't catch. This was compounded by the fact that we had no way to slow down any of their ships, and would ourselves be held in place by the Rapiers. I managed to get out through Akora after having to gatecrash a few times, and the Curse managed to get away via EOA-. Our other Hurricane got caught, however, and wasn't able to get away.

The enemy did a good job of placing scouts in systems were trying to get out through. We did a bad job in staying around for far too long, not moving around enough, and ultimately not logging off, which we probably should have done as we were trapped. We could have gotten both Hurricanes out then at the cost of coming back another day.

I don't think two Hurricanes and a Curse is a bad gang at all, but we were never a position where we could really utilize that. In the future, if we do go out in this sort of gang, we need to be able to slow down enemy ships simply because Hurricanes are the slowest ships on the field. Cynabals and the new battlecruisers are too prevalent for regular nano canes to work against another nano fleet setups. I may decide to bring a Huginn in the future and give up the Hurricane role, which should slow down enemy ships enough to allow the Hurricanes to slash through enemy ships with ease. The trick there will be not getting caught by a gang landing on field, and not getting pushed off the field so fast that my fleet can't kill the target.
 
Computer: terminate recording.