Monday 21 May 2012

CDM #27 - Miura Bull (Black Rifter Rebel)







The Celebrity

Miura ‘The Boss’ Bull; founder and leader of the nefarious Rifter-cult based from lowsec Heild and writer of the brilliant blog brutorbullfighter.blogspot.com/ .

Many will have crossed paths with the coolest corp name in-game for sure; you know the guys; Saftsuze (the dude with the tash), DARKSTARPOWNYOUALL (you know the guy that only writes in capslock) and the ever charming Kaeda Maxwell amongst just a few of the most notorious lowsec-scum-sucking-evil-do-ers in EVE.

 
The Black Rebel Rifter Club and the –KBG- guys occasionally run into each-other and although we keep smack to a minimum usually even I can’t help myself to spout a little (fake) drunken abuse their way, only meant in a friendly manner of course and only to get them to hang around long enough to jump in a Rifter to go chase them and make splosions. It is rare for them not to hang around and shoot back.

An awesome bunch indeed and their success as a stand-alone-corp makes me envious for sure. If you like frigate combat make sure to give these guys a shout and join their public channel; ‘The Autocannon’.

Preparation

Muira agreed to do a CDM with me at very short notice and we were to do the fight on Fight-Night, an event organised by Joe Struck. (Fight Night is basically a gathering of frigate lovers that love blowing things up) Mr Bull suggested to have 3 battles, all in frigate hulls; T1, faction and finally T2. Awesomesauce.

I prepared 40 frigates with decent fittings and of different races for whoever in corp wanted to come to Heild but with most of us already with other arrangements it would just be Ruddyn, MrMaax and myself. Other than those 40 frigates I also prepared 3 Firetails and a 150 mil pimp Jaguar.

The fights

Fight #1 – T1 Frigates

With a selection of different frigates and fits available and unsure what Miura would bring, I decided to go with as much EWAR as possible.  The Nuet-Rifter has a decent tank, a mid-slot scram that for this fight could be switched out to a web or tracking disrupter and with 2 damage rigs still does good DPS. Capacitor management would be key to keep everything running or at least run what keeps me alive and/or him dying.

Being the CEO of the Rebel Rifters I was pretty certain Mr Bull would bring  a Rifter class Frigate himself and opted to go with a Tracking Disrupter to negate some of the incoming damage or to force him in closer if he brought a kiting fit.  

The Bull notified me of his readiness and I undocked my combat vessel named ‘Sucking Mr Bull’. Nerves started to tingle as entered a 20au Warp-tunnel. Some pride at stake perhaps, but more than anything I didn’t want to give my corp-mates an opportunity to laugh at me, well not any more than they usually do.

A Tristan in purple fleet markings appeared on my HUD, a Tristan? how unexpected.  Warp-speed reduced and without pause primed guns fired hot plasma shells at Miura’s Gallente Frigate. Aggression was returned and rockets crashed deep into my shields. 

Pre-heated auto-cannons spit out hot death, stripping clean the Tristan’s soft outer-casing and penetrating deep into its armour. Holy shit! My heartbeat increased and blood rushed to my head, eyeballs tensed up as the Tristan showed a sliver of hull. I groaned over comms and Ruddyn piped up; ‘that doesn’t sound good?’ I struggle to get to the comms button again and squeak out; ‘ he’s dead’ but before I finish those two words I only manage ‘ngghh erp yuk..’   

MrMaax chuckles but enquires about my status. I re-establish my situation, before replying and explaining to them that Miura is likely fitting double reppers and has fully healed his Armour. For a moment I kicked myself for not flying the gank-rifter to punch through the double reps,  at all cost I need to keep the neutraliser going in an attempt to force Miura out of cap boosters. With pressure on my own tank now this is would prove to be hard.

Struggling to keep my modules active myself I chose to take it easy on the tracking disrupter, surely my least useful module. Damage gets exchanged in heavy blows and with his web still active Miura has a firm grip on my position to keep his blasters trained on me… no wait. I catch the glimpse of a damage message and it said Auto-cannons? 

Of course! For better range and to save his capacitor Miura had chosen to use Auto-cannons over blasters! Heating and reactivating all weapons as structure now shows for both of us, this was going to be close. His web deactivates as finally his cap is now failing… 

A volley of Phased Plasma rounds punch through the remaining hull and forcefully eject Miura’s escape-capsule. 

‘Pffwhouar’ I manage on comms..’ I won’.

Fight #2 – Faction Frigates

Local variably goes from 20 to 50 and wrecks are littered all over the place. Occasionally a ship is spotted larger than the frigate-hulls allowed in the contest organised by Joe Struck and all frigate pilots work together to bring them down.  As I undock my glorious Firetail, MrMaax and Ruddyn assist in the gank of a Hurricane somewhere else in system.

This Firetail fit was once handed down to me by Lady Shaniqua and had three mid-slots dedicated to EWAR and sported a classic active-armour-tank. A deadly boat for sure but not one I had flown before in this setup. I contemplated for a minute to remove the scrambler and replace it, but I didn’t want to keep my opponent waiting. I undocked and started the warp-drives, only then realising the armour module had heat damage. I didn’t stop and simply applied repair paste for the duration of my warp.

Again Miura surprised me as I entered the field of battle, this time he had prepared a Navy Slicer. I mumbled over comms I would be facing a Slicer… ‘Shit’ the response came, but as by a stroke of luck I latched on heated web and scram straight from the beginning of the fight. ‘Well if you don’t get a scram on, you are fucked’ the guys cheerily notified me. I was aware of that fact but gloated back that web and scram had already been applied.

With the slicers already poor tracking ability and without a counter-web to gain range I added insult to injury by keeping my Tracking Disrupter cycling, making the rest of the fight a sport-less kicking in the nut-sack.

My NOS kept all my modules running without any problems and I rarely needed the armor-repper as I approached and fired with heated weapons to ensure Miura’s demise.

Fight #3 – T2 Frigates

Sure, I may have won this CDM regardless of the outcome of this fight but I stood to lose a fair chunk of isk on my last ship named ‘Big Pimpin’. A sexy beast of a Jaguar, fitted with bling from top to bottom. A great ship indeed but without the help of a boosting alt it had already shown to be easily kited and out-damaged by un-blinged boats as unfortunately proven so by Tusker Tawa Suyo.
A loss that made me run with my tail in between my legs and hide in shame for some time. In fact, I haven’t set foot in Hevrice since that loss and have avoided Tawa to spare myself from more embarrassment. Tawa showed up in the local channel obviously gunning for the big prize later to which I contributed some isk. Over my dead body, that bastard will burn before he gets my isk damnit, I’ll be getting to you later….

‘Big Pimpin’ slipped into the darkness as my corp members notified me of an Enyo in space somewhere. I already pre-load Phased Plasma and thus didn’t change my ammo type. I love Enyo’s and I have one that punches out 420 DPS, with that in mind I tried to quickly work out what that would mean for my 99 dps-perma-tank Jag and limited buffer. 

It was too late though to change anything as the warp-tunnel closed up and the fight was on, I locked up the enemy Purifier and… concentrate I am going to be kited to death again in this fucker! SCRAM! Ok ok ok wtf is going on? The EWAR reader showed I was being tracking-disrupted and the damage notifications showed rockets and shells incoming. Purifier? No enyo?  I have been beaten before in bomber-class hulls sporting unusual fittings and didn’t feel safe just yet.  My damage output distorted by Miura’s EWAR to a mere 20% of its potential and the Purifiers buffer tank lasted a good duration, but as we settled into the fight properly it was clear the Purifier was unable to break my tank and its buffer was slowly but surely faltering.

Inevitably Muira bowed out and GF’s where exchanged as a blue flash confirmed his demise and my victory.

Round up

Miura is an awesomely nice guy and a great pilot; he took the idea of CDM and used it as it should have been done. I am obviously very happy to have won a CDM as it is statistically more likely I lose apparently but don’t detract this away from a short lucky streak to come away with this win. Its all about the fun and that buzz and trust me that was had!

Fight-night ended with a Thunderdome in one of the local plex’s. A great conclusion to the evening’s frigate slaughter in Heild. About 15 frigate hulls gathered at the entrance of the plex awaiting the signal to enter and to start killing each-other, and there he was, Tawa… over 100 clicks away and speeding faster than a bullet, he brought a sniping Harpy, nothing the web and scram can’t sort out nicely…

On Joe’s command the gaggle of blood-lusting pilots entered the plex and commenced battle, not me. I waited until Tawa landed at the gate with me and activated the warp-gate at the same time to ensure his demise on the other side.

Like as if by catapult we were hurled a light-year into the distance. My overview filled up with blue flashes, cannon-fire and rockets being shot at anything with a pulse. Starboardstarboard upupup! Approaching and preheated everything couldn’t help me catch him. As my lock resolved and modules activated Tawa had slipped away from my grasp… 13…19..27..43.. wow so fast.
Ah fuck here we go again… The thing about Thunderdomes is that if you can slip in quietly and pay attention to who is getting shot and then shoot them and you are sweet for at least a few kills. If you do what I do and lock up people you don’t necessarily scare them, but you do draw attention to yourself. Resulting in one of the first kills of the Thunderdome my Firetail lit up the darkness briefly as it spat out my pod. My killers; Tawa, Miura and Joe Struck.
Good fights and good funs had all around!

Oh yeah, I made a vidya to go with this, sorry the quality is a little poor but I cant figure how to make it better… Also I am still stuck with just windows movie maker for another few weeks.





#I don’t really hate Tawa, we made up, I just hate the fact he keeps killing me…

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Tarboy



Occasionally, only for the really worthwhile stuff I may digress away from EVE and link something you should watch. This is one of those...