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.

Back in The Tuskers I had a lot of fun running around low sec space in Thrashers. I was flying an autocannon fit and having a lot of fun shredding other destroyers, assault frigates, and Taranises at close range. Yesterday I decided it was time to try something different so, inspired by Isilza of Club Bear and after a chat with Garmon ages ago, I set out in an artillery Thrasher to see what havoc I could wreak. I haven’t flown a ship like this before so I spent a bit of ISK and bought plenty of fittings. The plan was pretty simple. I was just going to fit them up, roam into Providence and Curse, and see what I could kill.

The first couple of times I didn’t manage anything particularly impressive. I killed a Crow before dying to a Harbinger on my first trip out. The next time I was able to pick off a Rifter before dying to a bubble and bomber camp on the 9UYH-4 station. I could probably have survived the bomber camp but I got excited at the idea of taking down the Nemesis and his bomb got me with my MWD on.

During in my roam I bumped into a Genos Occidere gang while trying to get a Taranis to engage me. Needless to say I legged it pretty quickly seeing as they had a whole bunch of Angel Cartel ships and other vicious stuff. Thankfully I was about 90km from that gate at the time and made it to safety. Genos, who are notorious for tearing their way through Providence, have decided to join with Sev3rance and help defend Providence against -A- and Ushra’Khan. So far it looks like they’ve been having a lot of fun and my alliance mates have been caught with their pants down several times. While we’re pretty good at all the big fleet stuff the herd mentality that comes with an alliance means that we could really do with working on our small gang skills. Genos, Br1ck Squad, and Darkside are all regular thorns in our side that operate almost with impunity. We definitely need to get better at dealing with them. Thankfully my own corp seem pretty good at avoiding them. Hi Hercules Strongarm, by the way.

I was able to pull a Crow away from his gang in D-GTMI but on the other side of the gate, in F9E-KX, I tried the same with a Hawk, failed, and got toasted by another Harbinger. The next couple of sorties both ended without anything in the way of a fight. In D87E-A I thought I could cold warp away from a Cynabal only for a Sabre to uncloak and bubble me, the result was predictable. In CBL-XP I decided to try my luck against a Dramiel. I won’t do that again. He got to half shields before he got under my guns and killed me. To add insult to injury the rest of his gang – another Dramiel and two Daredevils – all came and held my pod to make sure they got on the mail. Thanks, guys.

With five losses under my belt now I was starting to get a feel for what I could and couldn’t do. From a standing start I was going to find it hard to get away from anything frigate-sized so the best thing to do is to warp to the next gate at range and then hope they give chase. Then I can burn away and toast them out of the range of their main gang. The Providence residents love to fly anti-frigate Harbingers and I can now say they are very effective.

Armed with this experience I set off in Thrasher number six. This time I had a series of engagements on my own terms and I was able to pull off some nice kills. First of all a lone Taranis died to me. He was able to escape my initial web and scram but when his support arrived on the gate he got too confident and I was able to kill him, loot his wreck, and get away before his backup could do anything. I then proceeded to toy with the two Sentinels and Taranis that came to help him. At one point I had the Taranis in armour but I was feeling twitchy so I decided to leave and move on. In 8P9-BM I had a nice running engagement with a gang that I was able to break off and then pick off a Crow and Hound. On my way back home from 9UYH-4 I found another roaming Paxton gang and once again I was able to pull the Crow away and kill it. The Crow’s pod came with a 26 million ISK bounty so I wasn’t too sad about not being able to loot the wreck.

In conclusion the artillery Thrasher is a lot of fun. If you fly it like a Vagabond and use it to pick off lone tackle ships it can be very, very effective. Despite the fact that I lost five ships I think I managed to collect enough loot to pay for the adventure and I am definitely doing well on the ISK efficiency, even if I no longer have 99.5%. On top of that I have now established a healthy lead in DKOD’s solo kill competition for February and I’ve started to collect footage for another film. Now I just have to actually remember to start the recorder.

One of the things I plan to do more of is nullsec roaming. There are lots of rich, foolish people out there and its my duty as a pirate to separate them from their ships. I decided that Friday night would be the ideal time to go out and do some exploring. I mentioned this to Joc and he wanted to come along too. When I logged in on Friday night there was a whole host of Tuskers kicking their heels around Hevrice. I told them about our plans and all of a sudden the corporate chat channel was full of eagerly typed ‘x’s. Amongst those who signed up was a friend of a friend who had only graduated from the academy three days ago. He’d never faced combat and definitely not the certain death that was ahead of us.

I hadn’t really prepared for such a large scale operation so told everyone to bring cheap ships and implantless clones. There was only a slim chance that we were going to make it out in one piece. Ships were fitted up and without too much delay we set off for Cloud Ring. The fleet was instructed that we wouldn’t stop to hunt for targets along the way and we made quick progress to Alsavoinon. After a quick pause to allow stragglers to catch up we made the leap of faith and the fleet jumped into F7C-H0 without scouts. A battleship gatecamp waited on the other side and I quickly warped the fleet to our next waypoint. As we passed through we were greeted cheerfully in local. The campers admired our style running a frigate fleet through without checking our way. They informed us of a large Triumvirate gang further into the region and we thanked them accordingly.

On the O-ZXUV gate we landed on a Hawk. Without a moment’s thought I gave the order to attack and the fleet opened up on the lone assault frigate. Only it wasn’t so alone. As the Hawk exploded and we began to loot the wreck the stargate began to flash. A fleet was incoming. The Hawk was scouting for a gang and they were coming to his rescue. I called for the fleet to jump out but we couldn’t use the stargate right away because our weapon’s systems were interfering with the subspace systems. We lost several members of the gang but half of us got out okay. The remaining fleet regrouped on the FD53-H where a Crow jumped into the system. I fired up my microwarp drive and burnt for the Crow. He must have been shocked to see a frigate coming for him at such great speed and I easily scrambled his warp systems. With his microwarp drive shut off the rest of the gang caught up and we blew him away.

With limited resources I turned the fleet around and we returned to Alsavoinon while those who had been killed went back to Hevrice to fetch new ships. With fresh ships we made a second foray into nullsec. This time we chose Syndicate. This time we were unable to make any kills and once again suffered heavy losses. Despite the fact that we didn’t cover the killboard in glory the operation was a huge success in that all involved had massive amounts of fun. As well as having a good giggle I also learnt that commanding fleets in nullsec takes far more preparation and organisation than lowsec fleets. Joc has also written about our adventures and I recommend you read his account.

After a brief rest from the excitement of getting everyone killed I decided it was time to come up with another way of losing ships in a fun way. The obvious answer was a suicide gank. I told the remaining Tuskers what I was considering and once again they all signed up without a moment’s hesitation. Organising the gank took a while. I ran out to Alentene to buy a range of cheap fittings and brought them back to Hevrice. The next challenge was finding a target. I saw some Hulks in Ranielles as I passed through and told the guys what I’d seen. At this point one of our friends began to get anxious. It seems that the Hulks were those of his CEO and his alts. To keep our friend happy I sent my alt off to find other targets. It didn’t take long to find a Retriever in Vey and I quickly pulled up alongside it in my mining Vexor. The trap was set. The Tuskers leapt into action and we flew through high security space laughing at the Gallente police’s threats. Upon landing in Vey I warped the squad to Tigre. Or so I thought. It seems that I left everyone else behind. They quickly caught up and we landed alongside our happless victim. Each of our four destroyers (and one Reaper) got off a single volley before CONCORD came to destroy us. It wasn’t much but it was enough. The Retriever was destroyed. It was brilliant. We will be doing this again before too long.

So there you have it. A night of dying in horribly fun ways! How are you going to have fun dying next?

You’re trying to bait a Hawk by ratting in a belt. The ship you’re in is an autocannon-equipped Thrasher. Two hostile destroyers warp in and start targetting you. Do you:

1. Warp out and try and engage them under your own terms?
2. Leave the Serpentis Baron that you’re engaging alone and move to intercept the new threat?
3. Or fanny around trying to finish off the NPC and get killed in the process?

Answers on the back of a postcard.

Just a quick post today. I don’t really have much to write to you about. One thing I learnt over the weekend, though, is that destroyers make me stupid. I have been playing with a couple of autocannon-fitted Thrashers and having fun annihilating targets. For some reason that I can’t explain, though, I have managed to warp both of them to gates when I have a GCC and then lost them to sentry fire. Thankfully neither of them had another player on the mail so I don’t have to embarrass myself on the killboard.

Maybe I’ll come back and visit them again when I have some more ISK. For now its back to Rifters and doing silly things with them well away from gates. Fly reckless!