Nashh Shiskabobbed by T'amber...

So T'amber has made a valiant return to the game after a little time off and produced this for his eve-facebook buddies. Yes... those are corpses spiked on the pointy bits, apperantly I am the second spike from the bottom, hanging upside down behind Virtuozzo Eve.

View more truly amazing ship edits on his photobucket page here.

Celebrity Death Match #20; Arrhidaeus

CDM #20 Arrhidaeus

Arrhidaeus requested a CDM with me about 7 months ago. I put him on hold at the time as this is not how CDM works, Celebrities are not self appointed. What his request did do however is draw attention to his blog, and what a blog it is indeed.

I started reading his stuff and immediately fell in love with his writing style, it was clever, witty, informative and of superior quality than my own for sure. Ever since I started reading his stuff he never ceases to amaze me with the quality of what he puts up for the world to see. Perhaps not as regular as some other bloggers but with Arrhi it is quality, not quantity. I personally started lobbying for his Blog to be added to the Blog Pack and still do (You reading this CK? Don’t make me post more sad panda pictures!)

As a fellow Bastard I get to follow his progression in-game as well and his heroics still amaze me every day. We are on different time-zones but due to my RL work I generally play the same time he would do. His playtime is about half of what I generally log-in for in any given week and we score about the same kills on average. This obviously means that if Arrhi would play as much as I do, he would kill twice as much as I do.

With a penchant for Navy Slicers Arrhidaeus rips up foes left right and centre, scoring epic solo kills wherever he roams. It is he himself I blame for my own addiction to Faction flavoured Frigates; my kill/loss ratio isn’t as good as his however…

Perhaps it is clear enough from the above but let me be very clear that I hold this man in the highest esteem and have a little bit of a man-crush on him…

Time for that CDM then I guess.


Preparation and stuffz…
Some ideas floated around about what to fight in, Faction Frigs had been mentioned, fitting restrictions were briefly discussed but Arrhi could not decide what to do. As time passed we flew occasionally together on little roams. On one particular evening we ended up Vitreaze and engaged 3 Tusker pilots in a Rifter, Firetail and a Jaguar, we preceded to melt them but lost Arrhi’s Slicer, leaving me to face three experienced pilots. By sheer luck all three Tuskers fell to my Ishkur, surviving with just a sliver of hull. Read Arrhi’s story here.

Arhhi was impressed, and of course I basked in the glory of the moment. It was utter luck not skill however that made me survive that fight. Perhaps I am wrong but I think that moment defined the choice of ships Arrhi eventually decided to fight me in…

Assault Frigates, another CDM first, brilliant! For days before the fight I tried to imagine what to bring, I can fly 3 different Races worth of AF’s and thus had the choice of 6 different ships. It was hard to imagine what my opponent would turn up in as he rarely flies Assault Frigs. No research was required to what he can and can’t do; I already follow his moves and progressions on the kill-board closely.

The fight played over and over again in my head; on the way to work, on the bus, when I made breakfast, you name it. This CDM I wanted to win more than any other. I wanted to show him who is boss and dominate…

After long deliberation I decided to use a kiting flavour of my Ishkur. A crazy fit perhaps but in all the possible scenarios that I played over and over in my head I saw this to be the fit that would work. Microwarpdrive-loving-Arhhi wouldn’t be able to run away from me or kite me if I fit a MWD myself. With a semi decent tank I would be able to tank whatever he throws at me if he is long range fit, and if he does fit an Afterburner instead I shall pummel him from range…

The fight
Arrhidaeus safed up in our home system Evati and the moment of truth had come. The Kaalikiota owned station released the sleek hull of ‘Mégas Aléxandros’ into the cold blackness. Named after Alexander the Great, the Ishkur class Assault Frigate aligned gently to a blank point in space. Its smooth surfaces reflected the lights beaming from the stations undock point.

‘Good luck’ I mumbled as the Warpdrive engaged. I lied, I didn’t wish him any luck, I wanted him to die. The room went silent, no music, no distractions, final equipment check…

Scanning ahead had already revealed the ship type I would be fighting, as the warp tunnel closed behind me I landed 30 clicks from my rival’s Ishkur.

Tactics had already been prepared for fighting this particular encounter as I set to work. I fired up the Microwarpdrive and selected a comfortable 20k orbit. Superheated rounds of Caldari Navy Thorium propelled towards the much slower target, doing minimal damage and missing various salvos.

The 10 Warrior II Light Scout Drones stayed in their bay until Arrhidaeus committed his own drones to travel the 20 kilometres into my direction. His drones finally deployed sped towards me…

Knowing the Ishkur well I proceeded to take out the majority of his DPS output by deploying my own drones and targeting his. Fighting at this range meant his drones had a long way to travel back every time he recalled them, giving my drones more time to destroy and maim.

Trying to keep count of how many drones he had left became harder as the fight went on but at best four to my estimation and set my drones to attack his spacecraft.

With Arrhi now suffering from heavy Armour damage I felt victorious and closed down all items on my Head Up Display to get a nice shot of his ship erupting into fragments.

But I waited, and waited a little longer, without the satisfying blue flash filling my overview. Quickly bringing my HUD back online it became clear that my drones were no more. Luckily I still had all my spares and deployed a fresh batch.

This fight had gone on for some time now and I started to wonder why my guns didn’t put out enough damage to finish off those last little slivers of hull. Checking logs revealed that nearly all shots fired missed their target. Thinking that my high speed didn’t help the tracking of my guns I slowed down, switching to manual flight.

My opponents shields slowly recharged as I desperately tried to approach and fly away to reduce our transversal and get a straight shot at him. Harder work than it may sound, as my weapons only have a 23k range and getting to close meant his Ion Blasters and NOS became an issue. So much of an issue that at one stage I took such heavy damage my hull peered through. Barely had I managed to escape and gained enough range to repair the damage done.

Concentrating so much on getting my guns to score some hits I forgot about my remaining drones until it was to late. A little grey cloud appeared were my final drone was last seen.

This couldn’t be a draw, I didn’t want it to end like this, I panicked as I loaded up the last scraps of ammo. The duration of the fight had been the cause for burnt out modules for the both of us, however Arrhi burned out the one reason my guns where useless, a Tracking Disruptor.

With his EWAR now out of the equation my guns finally did some damage. With my MWD burned out I selected approach and crossed my fingers as overheated-nearly-burned-out-Railguns fired hot lead.

I had won, I had actually won! This is the first CDM in 6 encounters I won! I surveyed the damage to my ship and realised the repair bill would be rather substantial. The fight started of with my hold crammed full of ammo and cap-charges. All that was left in my hold now were cigarettes, spirits, and a test-dummy.

Twenty-six minutes, a whopping 996 Faction Thorium charges and 40 cap-charges were spent trying to destroy Arrhidaeus, leaving just 4 rounds of ammo in my smoking Railguns...


Just for you Arrhi
My apologies for the late posting of this CDM but I didn’t want to post it until the video was completed to my satisfaction. Many thanks to our brother-in-arms TheHermit for helping me put this video together (watch it in HD, much better yeah). Perhaps only followers of both our blogs will understand, Arhhi, this is for you;




The ‘theme’ as you may have guessed is ‘Mortal Combat’, I intended to make this straight after this post made by Mr Arrhidaeus some time ago. Again I want to thank all involved in making this video possible, and yes I will deffo make more in the future.

Selling out
You may have noticed that CDM, or me as its representative is selling out. I have spend a lot of isk and time on CDM and it has finally come to a stage where I feel comfortable asking for sponsorship.

Some time ago a chap paid me 50 mil isk and I named my ship used in the next CDM in his honor, now however the isk goals are higher and I have been very lucky to find 2 sponsors for this video.

Many thanks to Selene D’Celeste from EOH POKER and the ever brilliant T’amber from ShipsOfEve for the contributions to this project. I hope to work together again in the future! (wink wink)

Another video is scheduled for my CDM with Entity some time soon, if you want to support the project or sponsor the video please contact me in-game or email me at nshhkdvr@gmail.com.


Watch this space!

T'amber and Ships of Eve

I may have a different outlook on life and on EVE than most people. One particular subject most people wil disagree on (after money, woman or religion) is art. Personally I have great respect for people with the skills to produce something original or people that create something that most people can not.

This post could continue talking about the works of Van Gogh or Michelangelo but I guess it would lose readers pretty soon. This post is dedicated to the creator of ShipsOfEve Mr T'amber and the brilliant stuff he has created.

Please note that this is a mere selection of the amazing selection of EVE related art he has created but I had to pick a few to make your jaws drop. There is lots more and I couldn't speak when he started showing me some of his work, but with his permission I present you the following;













Thank you so much for sharing this with us Mr T'amber, I wish you had more time to do more of this as this is truly what inspires us mere EVE plebs.

For those interested, and yes that is all of you, please view the lots and lots of other stuff produced for ShipsOfEve by mr T'amber here.



(ps no, there shall be no re-match between you and me, I have something much better in mind for you sir....)


Watch this space

Celebrity Death Match #21; T'amber

Celebrity Death Match #21; T'amber- EVE Lottery Mogul

Chack’Nul
Chack’Nul contacted me several months ago and requested a duel, not something that unusual really, I get these requests rather often since the start of CDM nearly a year ago. Mr Chack’Nul fought me in his ‘Tristan of Doom’ and completely obliterated my ‘Kessy of Doom’. He graciously linked me his fit and I fell in love with it. That was the day I started training for Gallente Vessels and still stock some Tristan’s named in his honour. We did catch up at a later date to test my skills in the sexy Tristan hull, Chack killed me again, his superior skills very clear.

We sporadically stay in touch and one particular conversation he suggested for me to challenge T’amber for a Celebrity Death Match. T’amber? From shipsofeve? Ha! Like as if he’s gonna make time for me. One thing I learned is that celebrities that do not write blogs themselves see me as a nuisance if anything.

A few months later and I received an Eve-mail from Chack, in it was a copied convo between him and T’amber. The convo had Chack describing what I do and T’amber seemed interested however not keen on leaving Jita. But he was interested…

First contact
T’amber has been in my address-book for some time, and he certainly had a spot on the Celebrity Death Match wish list. It never seemed right to speak to him however; I lacked the balls to disturb him. With the initial contact already made for me I made the call…

The conversation took me back to the early days of CDM, I had to explain who I am, what I do and then convince my opponent to agree to a duel. Contacting a fellow blogger is usually easier as they will have heard of CDM or even read it before.

Mr T’amber didn’t make me grovel or beg though and agreed to meet up with me, as long as the duel would take place in Jita. ‘Well’ I mumbled… ‘there is a little issue with the Jita high security status thingy…’. ‘Them’s the stipulations, I live in Jita and don’t leave there’ the lottery mogul continued; ‘Security status is irrelevant’ pointing at his own sec status. Hang on, this dude is a super rich, well know tycoon, lives in Jita and has a -10 sec status?!

‘Yes, of course’ is all I could muster, not sure what to expect from a duel in high sec with a shoot on sight sticker on my back. ‘It will be a time-trial; we will both undock in Jita 4-4 and the pilot alive the longest, wins’. T1 Battleship was to be the flavour of hull type, and as a parting hint he linked a previous BS-loss, lost in the very same way he intended to time-trial-duel me. ‘Crap’, he is an experienced-BS-suicider?

This conversation took some time; his responses were short and sporadic. One of the first questions I ask when speaking to a potential CDM contestant is if they have time to speak, he said he did. Only after speaking to him a few times and spending time in his home solar system do I understand our very first conversation. He did give me all the time and attention he could spare, having 10 different chats on the go at any one time is a quiet time for him I guess…

Preparations
EFT provided some insight in what could possibly be done to max out a buffer for my Dominix. Lag was to be expected, possible so much so that undocking would fill my overview with nothing. Nothing until I would awake again in my home system covered in pod goo. My choice was simple; no active mods, no Invuls, no Damage Control systems, just 1600 plates and large Shield Extenders.

Saturday night after work I undocked my Jovian Egg into the Evati night sky and set course for Jita. My intentions were simply to be ready to do the duel at a moment’s notice on Sunday, the agreed date. I had my sons christening and didn’t know if I would have enough time to fit and prepare my stuff on the day of the duel.

I decided to travel in my pod as it is the safest and quickest way to get into high-sec space. The align time is virtually 0 and thus no pilot would be able to get a lock on me quick enough to stop my progress. ‘Nothing can kill you’ I hummed to myself speeding through system after system. On-route I spammed the request for support on the day of the fight.

‘Nothing can kill you’ I hummed to myself, taking a sip from my 2am coffee. I nearly choked on that coffee when the inside of the Evati Clone Facilities filled the screen.

A large ‘Vehemence’ smart bomb doesn’t require a lock and its favourite food is eggs. I updated the clone and immediately set off again. Less chirpy this time however, I like my implants you know…

Arriving in the system I lost my pod it didn’t take long to find the perpetrators. Pirate Corp ‘Negative ten’ must have had a bad day at the office and were killing indiscriminately with their sizeable BS-heavy fleet. Many roads lead to Jita, I know, but the opportunity for sleep was getting smaller and smaller so I piped up in local, requesting safe passage in return for a fee. Isk and words of honour where exchanged.

Travel was uneventful after that and I docked up in the busiest station in the busiest solar system in the EVE Universe. Jita… god how I hate her... the local channel filled up quicker than one could read, scams, links to contracts, vague snippets of conversations poured through, madness, absolute madness. I purchased a Dominix and fitted it to the spec I prepared earlier, filled the cargo hold with lots of random rubbish, logged off and went to bed.

If I would believe in hell I am sure to be taking a nose-dive into that lava pit some day, I mumbled some stuff in church when my son was christened, wishing to be at home, playing EVE. Dinner with the parents in law couldn’t be over quick enough… From the restaurant I rushed home to get the last of the AT8 action and to get an update on the Dead Terrorist/Bastard fight earlier that day before seeking contact with T’amber.

Unfortunately our date was to be postponed as this CDM’s celebrity was severely ill, taking regular breaks to puke his guts out. Our time trial got rescheduled for the following evening…

On Monday I logged in and had to endure 4 hours of Jita’s insanity. The local chat channel did what it usually does, the two channels in use by T’ambers-shipsofeve were no better however, pandemonium, jokes, singing, links to various pictures, prizes being thrown around, bingo, you name it, it was happening.

It certainly wasn’t the longest wait for a celebrity but it was definitely the most mentally draining. I don’t know how he does it, how could any sane man deal with this kind of mental terrorism? T’amber is made of sturdier brain stuff than me, that’s for sure…

The duel
When my opponent finally found a spare minute to grant me my duel, a final call was made for pilots in Jita to undock and prepare to shoot me or T’amber, or both. The moment I had waited for had come as T’amber counted down from 10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1 UNDOCK!

‘Rep me quick’ prepared to undock, the overview blacked out, no night sky appeared. For a moment I thought I would simply awake in Evati never knowing what had hit me but the outside of the Jita station finally appeared.

The strategy was pretty simple, undock and watch…

The heavy humming of the stations bowels ceased, with chat channels now minimized everything went quiet. Eerily quiet in fact, as my Dominix-class Battleship gently floated away from the docking bay. Jita Police arrived as the silence broke; many ships now lighting up bright yellow as their targeting systems went live. Here we go… The silence broke properly as Jita opened up its guns on me.

Like thunder and lightning, streams of light from all around me started connecting with my vessel. A full-red-flashy-overview took my shields as if they weren’t even there. I tried to target T’amber and get a volley of to ensure a spot on the kill-mail but the lag was so bad I couldn’t even resolve a lock.

The lag did stand in my favour however as T’amber had 2 active mods on his Dominix and would have serious issues even switching them on…

Alarm bells flared, screaming even over the sound of guns, announcing the inevitable. The Domi erupted in a large bright ball of fire, vomiting out my pod in the process. I don’t know how, but I managed to engage the warp drive and as the tunnel prepared to suck me in, I caught a glimpse of T’amber’s ship exploding.

One of the shipsofeve-volunteers had kept time from when we each undocked (I undocked earlier) and he reluctantly declared me the winner. Perhaps not the greatest way to duel, but this was not about the action more mass entertainment, I guess. It has been a pleasure meeting T’amber and having had a sneaky peak into his EVE life, I cannot imagine what he must put up with.

Spin-dizzy I selected the quickest route home and closed down shipsofeve-channels that continued to pour out more stuff and chatter, faster than the eye could see.


More CDM soon, so watch this space…

CDM NEEDS YOU!

CDM #21 has been scheduled for this Sunday! For the more observant readers you may have noticed that there is a CDM missing, number #20 to be exact. This CDM has already taken place however I shall not be posting the result and blurb just yet as there is a little side project to be added to this and this is not completed. It will be done soon however so keep your eyes peeled for that one!

The reason I am giving you the heads up on CDM #21 is because I need your help. The 21st EVE Celebrity Death Match shall be with Mr T’Amber from the well known SHIPS OF EVE LOTTERY. As always the Celebrity makes up the rules for the fights and T’amber has requested a rather strange duel…

We are to undock in Jita 4-4 in Battleships with our -10 sec status and the winner will be the Pilot that stays alive the longest. A time trial CDM first!

Now you may ask; how can I help? The answer to that is pretty simple; bring guns or Remote-Repping ships to Jita this coming Sunday. To shoot T’Amber you will take no Concord or Police aggression and will assist in bringing down my foe quicker. To ensure I live longer I require Remote Repping, however this is only to be done by pilots willing to sacrifice their ship and security status as by assisting notorious outlaw Nashh you will take Concord aggression and will be shot.

The fight will happen Sunday evening in between an Alliance Tournament match, however a time has not been agreed just yet as I have my sons christening to attend to first. Not that I am religious but the wife wants to and she is the boss. It shall therefore take place later in the day and on ‘Jita-Cam’.

So be part of a CDM this Sunday and come to Jita 4-4, bring guns and help obliterate T’Amber or be really brave and bring some Remote Reps for me!

Please leave a comment on this post letting me know if you will be attending and what you’ll be bringing and I shall ensure to mention any supporters in the actual CDM post and buy everyone a beer after the action!

Watch this space…