Last night I went on a roam through Syndicate with my friends Gilad Ayn and Slotos. Its been a while since I led a gang and I thought it was time for some practice. We met up in Harroule with Gilad and myself flying gank Ruptures and Slotos in a similarly fit Vexor. The plan was to roam around and check out any hotspots on the map. Because we lacked any interceptors I scouted ahead.

We found a fight almost instantly in MHC-R3 when I scanned a Ferox down on our out gate. I warped in for the tackle and called in support. By the time I landed there was also a Stabber Fleet Issue on grid. I burned away from the Stabber and tried to put damage onto him while the guys arrived. Upon landing we did our best to take out the Stabber but in the end had to withdraw from the field after Slotos’ Vexor was destroyed.

Once Slotos had reshipped, this time into a Brutix, we began to head along the pipe again. Our destination was DP34-U where several ships had been killed in the last hour. The journey down was pretty uneventful once we had evaded the camp on the 6E-578 gate. I tackled a travelling Tempest but it had warp core stabilisers fit and was able to warp away.

In XS-XAY I found an Arbitrator on the DP34-U gate. I made the tackle and called in the guys. The Arbitrator was melting so I took the damage off to allow my gang mates to get on the mail. As they arrived a Falcon and Vagabond jumped through. Fifteen minutes of warping in and out to avoid jams while trying to take down the Vagabond followed. At one point I managed to warp in right on top of the Falcon and put my damage and drones on it but he was able to jam me and warp off before I got him through half armour. Meanwhile Slotos was tackled and starting to leak into deep structure. With the Falcon gone Gilad and I were able to chase the Vagabond away from Slotos and he warped just in time. Now the Vagabond was starting to go down and it was time for the Falcon to warp in at long range and jam us again. I was able to warp out but Gilad was tackled by the Arbitrator which, by this time was in low structure. Just as I began to warp in to his aid he was able to destroy the Arbitrator and warp away. Despite landing unsupported I got away before the Vagabond could lock and scramble me.

With the gang sitting in a safe spot it was time to think about getting Slotos’ heavily damaged ship repaired. There is a station in 35-RK9 with a repair facility. I went ahead to scout and found an Astarte guarding the gate. I jumped through and the Astarte followed. In order to make it safe for Slotos to jump in I tried to kite the Astarte away from the gate but I was playing too free and easy with the range and he was able to get a scrambler on me. Local spiked and my Rupture was not long for this world.

The guys were alone now but I was able to help them navigate over Vent while they got docked up, repaired the damage, and got into an empty system to log off. At that point it was time to call it a night.

Seeing as plenty of people have been offering up the contents of their hangar I thought I should probably join in. My hangar in GE-8JV contains the following ships:

• Rifter: I have about 15 of these kicking around with a couple of fits that I am trying out. They are usually just called Rifter but at the moment I have one called Freki after the alliance tournament prize and one called Agincourt after its victory over the French in Curse.
• Cheetah: Called Peek-a-boo and used mostly for probing exploration sites. My probing skills are terrible and I use the exploration sites to get some practice. Honest.
• Claw: I have two of these both confusingly called Claw and it takes me a couple of attempts to tell them apart. One is fit with an active tank and the other with a buffer tank. Not a ship I regularly solo in so the active tank ship gets more use in interceptor packs.
• Stiletto: My staple fleet ship. I currently only have one of these because they die pretty often. She’s called Point! and my fit is pretty standard for a tackle interceptor. Sometimes I like to put on explosive shield resist rigs when I’m tackling for a small gang.
• Hound: When I run frigate gangs I tend to FC from the safety of my stealth bomber. Hound is fit to be able to use torpedoes and bombs and the cloak makes it a good ship to lead from.
• Republic Fleet Firetail: Currently unassembled my Firetail is waiting for me to come up with a fit that I like before I take her out hunting.
• Dramiel: I have two of these sleek and popular Angel frigates. The hefty price tag and status as flavour of the month has put me off flying them. I should really sell them while their price is at a peak but I like having them around.
• Thrasher: This is probably my favourite ship to fly at the moment and I have seven in my hangar. Three of them are fit; one with artillery, one with autocannons, and one with an experimental setup I have yet to try. All of them are called either Sabre or Thrasher except the test one which is called Brick.
• Sabre: This is the most recent addition to my hangar and one that I am just getting the hang of flying. She’s called Sabre and has been out on a couple of gangs now.
• Rupture: Another staple and a ship I have been flying in solo a lot recently. I currently have two fit in my hangar. Freki is fit as a nano ship for pretending to be a Vagabond in and Rupture is a pretty standard armour tank fit.
• Muninn: A pretty standard sniper HAC that hasn’t been used in far too long. Named Muninn in case you didn’t spot the general theme here.
• Vagabond: Another staple of any Minmatar hangar. Eponymously named Vagabond she comes out in small gangs.
• Rapier: I haven’t actually used her in anger but she’s there for when I need her. Until then Rapier still has the manufacturer’s shrink rap on some of her controls.
• Scimitar: Because I only have Logistics IV I haven’t played with Scimitar much. She’s fit for roaming PvP gangs but I’m still adjusting the fit until I’m happy with it. I do sometimes fly logistics for alliance fleets but in those cases I use official alliance-fit logistics ships.
• Hurricane: I have just one of these called, imaginatively, Hurricane. She’s fit for damage and hasn’t seen the light of day for quite a while.
• Tempest: Machariel is my fleet fit Tempest for when DPS is the only thing we need. I prefer to fly in support roles but lately there hasn’t been any point so the fleet battleship has been brought out. Despite being a small ship pilot in general I have had fun flying Tempests in small gangs with some of my old pirate friends. I tried a nano fit but it died due to over confidence or lack of ability. Hopefully I’ll try another before too long.
• Typhoon: This is my ratting ship. I lost her predecessor due to accidentally turning off all my hardeners so this one is called Pay Attention. I don’t use her much these days because my alts provide most of my income.

As you can see, Wensley’s hangar is fully focussed on PvP. The Wolf, Jaguar, and Cyclone are noticeable by their absence at the moment but I’ll probably buy some soon. I like to be stocked for any eventuality. In general I tend to solo in the T1 ships and use the T2 variants in gangs and fleets.

The An’Har family, by contrast, have a selection of shuttles, a Prowler, and a Mastodon to their name. They’re saving up for a Fenrir but that is probably a little while away because Wensley loses ships at a phenomenal rate.

Last night I began with my usual circuit in my Rifter. There was very little to see. Even Old Man Star was deserted. In fact, it was so empty that I actually got distracted on a gate while fiddling around with our communications systems. The quality had been poor so I was tuning them up for better performance. Anyway, bloedriver from the 22nd BRDU engaged me and, because I’d only been alerted to his presence by the fire of autocannons I jumped out rather than fight on the back foot. I never turn down a Rifter duel, though, so I quickly jumped back in and offered him a proper fight. He agreed and we went to a safe location. A short and brutal frigate duel followed. My guns hit his tank hard but he repaired the damage well. All the while my own systems were doing their best to limit the incoming damage. I eventually overcame his tank and his Rifter exploded. A very good fight and yes, bloedriver, I did catch it on film. Looking back at his fitting the high damage was due to a gyrostabiliser while his damage control unit gave him a good structure buffer while he tried to repair his armour. Sadly for him the extra plate I carried gave me plenty of buffer to make up for the fact my guns were less potent.

Later on I thought I’d mix it up by undocking my Rupture as part of a gang we had going. To cut a lot of running around missing targets short we ended up ganking a Myrmidon in Aeschee and in Adirain I engaged a Rupture and Thrasher only to bail when a Ferox arrived on the scene. The Rupture was later destroyed and I was kindly sent the killmail.

Back in Hevrice there were a Crow, Rupture, and Myrmidon hanging around and camping the station undock. Now I don’t like campers. Especially not ones with interceptors. There was only one way to deal with this pain. But first I needed some bait. My eyes drifted across my hangar as if drawn by some higher force until they rested on Angel Interceptor. My face lit up with a grin.

“I’m going to bait them boys,” I said into comms.

“Oh. What with?” came the reply.

“Just a little something I have lying around,” I responded.

Sure enough the Dramiel drew both the Rupture and Crow onto the station undock and a long, boring game as I tried to get them to aggress me. After a long time and a yawn in the local channel they finally started shooting. First the Rupture and then the Crow. Bingo. I docked up and grabbed my Rupture again. The seconds ticked down while my crew got the ship ready to undock and soon I was in the undock passage. Please please please let them be there still.

They were and I sped up and shot towards the Crow. He must have forgotten he’d aggressed me because he made no attempt to get safe. Autocannons, neutralisers, and warp disruption fields shot across the empty space between us and I vaporised the interceptor. Next up was the Rupture but he docked up as soon as he started to take major damage. Damn it. I hate station games. Yes, I know I use them to get aggro but that’s all. This popping in and out is just pathetic. Fight or don’t fight.

Anyway, I digress. This is when things get interesting. A Chimera undocked from the station and began neuting my cruiser. Hmmm. Now I was taking damage but Antilles had undocked his Archon and was repping me. Now the station games got silly. With carrier support there was nothing I could do against the Rupture or Myrmidon but equally nothing they could do against me. Our numbers slowly grew but without getting them do engage we’d have to deal with sentry aggro. Lots of bumping attempts followed and several Tuskers picked up sentry fire. Support for the campers arrived in the form of a Rokh and another battleship. By now their firepower and the sentries meant that Antilles was having real issues juggling his repair systems. I was in the process of heading back to dock up but it was too late. Having taken over 30,000 units of damage my Rupture gave up the ghost and exploded. Damn. Still, a Crow for a Rupture isn’t a bad swap.

I’ve never played around with carrier support. It was lots of fun but we were massively disorganised. If we’d stopped to think things through a bit more we’d have been able to come up with a more co-ordinated attack on our visitors.

A little less conversation, a little more action please
All this aggravation aint satisfactioning me
A little more bite and a little less bark
A little less fight and a little more spark
Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me
Satisfy me baby

A Little Less Conversation, Elvis Presley

It seems that since my little holiday things have started to heat up in low security space again. Until recently things had been pretty quiet but over the last week or so the fights have been coming thick and fast and that’s how I like them.

Last night was no different. I woke up in the sleeping quarters of my Rupture class cruiser. The Rupture is a ship that will appeal to any Brutor. It packs a rack of medium autocannons and can fit a mean amount of armour. Being the blood-thirsty killer that I am I optimise mine for massive amounts of autocannon damage. It really is a veritable space galleon. Anyway, I digress. My Rupture was stationed in Adirain following an alert the previous day. Although I missed the kill I’d stayed in Adirain and powered my ships systems down in deep space.

As my systems came online I spied a Vagabond in the local system. Because my ship was in orbit around a planet he scanned me down and warped towards me but I wasn’t to be caught off guard. For a while I toyed with the idea of trying to pin down the high speed Minmatar cruiser and take it down but I didn’t have enough confidence in my own ship’s defensive systems. Maybe I should invest in some of those implants I’ve heard about Sansha pilots flying with. Either way I decided that Adirain was too hot and set my computer for home.

As I jumped into Hevrice I was greeted by the sight of an outlawed Jaguar sitting just off the gate. This was too juicy a target to ignore and I primed my guns and tackled systems before bursting out of the cover that the gate’s cloaking system was providing me with. The assault frigate pilot, a member of the Black Rabbits, was caught off guard and my ECM drones prevented him from responding while rounds of Republic Fleet EMP tore into his advanced shield systems. While I was settling into orbit an Ishkur landed in support. This didn’t look good and I began yelling for support in the corporate communications channels but no-one was able to respond. A Rifter landed at range but bugged out leaving me with just the Jaguar and Ishkur to worry about. Surprisingly it seemed that the two ships were concentrating their damage on my ECM drones and I melted the Jaguar for minimal damage to my own systems. Next up was the Ishkur which met a similar fate. Between the two of them they’d barely been able to dent my shields. It was a pleasant surprise. Either ship should be able to give me a run for my money and both were piloted by pirates. It was a good way to start the evening’s killing.

I docked up the Rupture and had my technicians dispose of the loot while I prepared a Rifter. My plan was to head over to Old Man Star and see if I could find any trouble. That place is a hotbed of action with peaceful pilots, militiamen, and pirates aplenty. I wasn’t surprised at all to see another Tusker lurking in the system. Caster Rom was cruising around in his Taranis looking for a fight too. Pretty soon we were joined by PreZidenT and Alex Rudd and had a force capable of looking for a proper target. That came along when PreZ decided to tackle a Scorpion that was obviously playing bait in a belt. Confident that we could get out if a trap was sprung we all followed into the fray and began chipping away at the Scorpions shields and then armour. His ECM units occasionally broke our locks but we had enough ships to keep him pinned down. He had been assigned fighters from a carrier which couldn’t hit us but kept us on high alert for reinforcements. The Scorpion’s armour was dropping to critical levels when a Cerbereus and then Navy Issue Megathron warped in. The Tusker fleet aborted and warped out but Alex’s Thrasher was lost. It was a close call for the Scorpion pilot and with maybe one more frigate we’d have been able to take down the powerful ECM battleship. Good work, Tuskers.

While looking for my next good fight I scanned down a Catalyst in a belt. The pilot was fresh out of the academy and it didn’t take long to kill his destroyer and pod. During this time local was full of greetings and banter. It seems that in addition to my Rifter guide the release of my first combat film has made me even more well-known. One of the members of Space Perverts and Forum Warriors challenged me to fight his Vigil and capture it on film. Frigate on frigate? Well, the fight seemed pretty balanced so I was keen but aware of the fact he had friends in local. I was flagged as a criminal from engaging the Catalyst so I warped to the gate that he was camping at long range and then warped off to a planet in the hope that he had seen me and would follow. Now all I had to do was prime my weapons and wait…

Sure enough the Vigil landed 30 km from me and my camera drones were set to record. Now the Vigil is an electronic warfare support frigate and its main strength is its sheer speed. It can’t fit much of a tank so my plan was to fight it like I would an interceptor. To that end I had loaded my guns with close range ammo with the plan to get in close and orbit under his guns. The Rifter has a bonus to autocannon tracking which the Vigil lacks. I sped towards my opponent and he did the same to me. As I hit lock range I gave the command to begin targeting and as my systems resolved I was greeted by the gentle glow of my overloaded tackle systems coming to life. But not for long, though. The Vigil was soon out of my range. What?! Damn. He had an afterburner fitted. Still from that range he would be hard pushed to do me damage. Sure enough my shields and then armour were being slowly but inexorably chipped away despite my repairer. I concentrated on trying to manoeuvre into range and completely forgot to change my ammunition over to a long range variant. By the time I rectified this mistake it was too late. My stasis webifier had burnt out and my armour levels were critically low. I braced myself as my Rifter exploded and quickly warped my pod to safety. Looking at the killmail it seems that my opponent had taken advantage of the Vigil’s excellent capacitor to fit lasers. These long range weapons would allow him to chip away at me out of range of my own guns. I wonder what would have happened if I’d had Barrage loaded. Oh well, you win some, you lose some. Well played, Tosi. That’s an excellent fit and the fight will definitely feature in my next film.

Back in Hevrice I docked my pod and went away to do some chores while my criminal status wore off. Thankfully I have a hangar full of Rifters so I was back out in space almost immediately. On the station undock I was greeted by the sight of a war target! Did I not mention that The Tuskers are at war again? The Wolf was engaging PreZ’s Thorax and I burnt back to the station to get something with a bit more punch. There was a report of a hostile fleet camping the Hevrice gate in Muetralle so I would have to act quickly. My hangar crew made the change in record time and I was soon back out in my Rupture. I locked down the Wolf and began firing, rejoined by PreZ. He didn’t stand a chance and we soon destroyed him. I locked down the pod for good measure and was about to begin ransom negotiations when I saw the system population rise rapidly. I span up my autocannons and aligned to warp to safety, not even stopping to loot the wreck. This was a good decision. The hostile fleet landed as I entered warp. On my return the wreck was already looted and the station camped so I made for the docking ramp without hanging around.

My mood was buoyant. So far I’d made four good kills for just the loss of a single Rifter. I wasn’t going to stop now so I hopped back into my favourite ship and undocked. I waved at the camping fleet as my nimble ship entered warp before they could even respond at my presence and went about my business unimpeded. This is one of my favourite things about the Rifter. You can’t camp me in and its almost impossible to disrupt my activities if I’m careful. I set my navigation system for Adirain and went to see if I could find any targets in this border system rather than stay around Hevrice and be hunted by this fleet.

In Adirain I quickly scanned down a Thorax ratting in a belt. The pilot was young and inexperienced so I should be able to take him on in my Rifter. I engaged my warp drive and pounced into the fray. My ship landed 30 km from my target and after an initial miscommunication with my navicom I was soon burning towards him. He had a handful of low tech medium drones out so I shrugged them off and concentrated my fire on the cruiser instead. My guns made good progress through his shields and armour and as he began to take hull damage I opened up a ransom channel. As soon as I’d offered him the chance to save his ship a hostile Punisher landed in the belt. I didn’t have time to hang around and negotiate so I finished off the Thorax and apologised to the pilot. My focus was now on the Punisher and I burnt towards it at full speed reloading my guns as I shot through the black of space. I was soon upon him and my guns tore through his defences. Incredibly quickly, in fact. Destroying him was the work of moments and it needed to be because as his hull buckled a Sleipnir landed in the belt as well. I didn’t hang around and gave the command to warp out while instructing my navigator to bookmark the location of the Punisher’s wreck. I was coming back for that. As soon as I landed I turned my ship around and headed back to retrieve my winnings. I came out of warp just out of cargo transfer range and had to burn towards to wreck to obtain my prize. With the loot scooped I hit the warp command again and made it out to safety but not before the mighty command ship had hit me with a powerful volley from its vulcan autocannons, stripping my armour down to half integrity. Luckily the Sleipnir moved off and I was able to loot the Thorax’s wreck in peace. It was a shame that his valuable armour repair system was destroyed in the explosion but that’s life.

With six kills under my belt I was finally done for the evening and I headed back to Hevrice to dock up. Back in my quarters I caught up with a few old friends and spoke to Allii about some things I wanted buying. She reported back that my loot was selling well and that our account was currently flush with ISK. I began fantasising about what to spend it on. While I was day dreaming reports came in of a fight against a Hurricane, Manticore, and pair of Eagles but I was half asleep and left my corp mates to dispose of the threat in true Tusker style.