Want to play a game?

Let's play a little game. A short PvP quiz if you will.

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Here's the scenario. You're in a duo of a Hurricane and a Rifter, both sitting at zero on the gate. Your 'Cane is a classic 425mm Autos/shield tanker, while your Rifter is fitted with a long point and a MWD, with a light active armour tank. There's a war target Taranis buzzing around who's been following you for several jumps now, after skirmishing with your fast tackle earlier. At this moment, he's sitting 160-70km off the gate, just observing. Here are the three most obvious options (in my opinion) for what you can do.

A) Ignore him. It's not like he's going to risk engaging a Hurricane on his own, and all he's currently doing is watching you

B) Send out the Rifter to tackle him. With a MWD and long point, he'll hopefully last long enough for your 'Cane to warp to him (150km is minimum warp distance), neut him out and fling drones in his face.

C) Call in backup tackle to kill him, because the Rifter will most likely die, and you don't want the Taranis following you long enough for an enemy gang to catch up with you and kill you both.

Which would you do?

Well personally I would go for option C, since getting constantly scouted is just begging to get caught eventually...

Oh wait, no sorry, you can't do that one, because the Taranis murdered your other tackler (a Malediction) about five minutes before, using the exact same tactics as he is now. Also your Griffin died a minute or so after the Malediction when he tried to smartbomb on the gate, so you can't even jam out the Taranis and tackle him. I forgot to mention those ships at the start ;)

You could call for help in Militia Chat, but you may look a little silly calling for help about a puny Interceptor.

So instead the duo take the secret fourth option:

 D) Have the 'Cane burn out under MWD and assume the Taranis will sit there quietly while you tackle him and let your Rifter buddy (who stays at zero on gate) whore on the mail when you catch it.

What could go wrong?

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Incase you hadn't guessed by now the Taranis was, of course, me, and this exact scenario (in reverse) was the one facing me last night. I personally expected more frigate tackle to turn up any second, but noooo, that would be the sensible thing to do, and all squids have apparently had their sense surgically removed years back.

So earlier I had baited a Malediction off gate from his gang including a Hurricane (who was using T1 guns), a Rifter and a Griffin in Iwisoda, and quickly melted him. However, I baited him a little too far which gave the rest of the gang room to warp, and I was soon jammed out (but not tackled) by the Griffin. With the Hurricane aligning towards me too, I decided to warp back to the gate (after pulling my drones) and jump on through. The aggression timers on the gang gave me time to scoot off gate on the other side in Rakapas and hold at 160km. I waited to see what they would do next.

The Griffin, Rifter and 'Cane all jumped in together, before crashing back to gate. The Griffin then decided to smartbomb for some reason and got torn in half by the gate guns. His pod zoomed off, slightly embarrassed. Then essentially the above scenario happened next. Go read it again if you've forgotten ;)



Back? Good. I'm now sitting around 170km off the gate to Iwisoda with a Hurricane steaming towards me, apparently determined to murder my face. I wanted to get another kill, purely to be an asshole and get away again without dying. While I knew the 'Cane had T1 guns fitted (he fired at me earlier and I saw it in my log), which made him a tempting target, I was pretty sure dual medium neuts and a flight of light drones would really screw me over. That made the Rifter my preferred target, and they were helpfully splitting up for me.

I decided to be super tactical and waited for my moment to strike. With the Hurricane 110km from me, I warped to the gate at zero, where the Rifter was sitting perfectly still, not even orbiting in jump range. The Hurricane was left over 60km off the gate, unable to do anything to save his buddy as I lit up my blasters and beat the living daylights out of the poor Rifter. Then I caught his pod too and popped that.

The Hurricane warped away.

I had a good giggle, patted myself on the back, scooped the loot and ran off back to Nennamaila.

Also Nennamaila is damn pretty. I love blue stars

And this has happened fairly often in the last couple of days. Baiting fast tackle ships into doing something dumb is disturbingly easy. Here's some examples:

I engaged an Interceptor as he jumped into me in Hikkonen, and he was soon dead as a doornail thanks to the LOLDPS the Taranis can put out. Unfortunately, his gang arrived halfway through the fight and popped me not long after the Crusader went down. And then they got my pod too which was a little embarrassing.

But I soon grabbed another Taranis and tempted this Crow a little too far away from his friends for them to help him. He died too quickly for them to catch up and tackle me :D

Then the next day in Nennamaila I was skirmishing with an Assault Frigate gang outside a medium plex, who had some fast tackle in the form of a Condor and a Caldari Navy Hookbill. They chased me around 80km away from their gang, where I proceeded to slingshot and murder the Hookbill, before forcing the Condor to pull range by setting my drones on him. I escaped in structure (around 78%). And I'm assuming the other guy on the mail shot at him earlier, because he had full shields etc when I caught him :P

I also helped a friendly Raptor pin down another kiting Condor (I swear these things are the FOTM in the Caldari Militia) and kill that too. Because I'm so helpful and stuff.

"Meh" you say "So this ship can kill lightly tanked fast tackle. So what?"

Well it can also brawl down rocket Hookbills like a freakin' boss and it locks fast enough to catch pods. That was nailbiting fight to say the least...

38% hull, proper casual like

The Taranis is easily my new favourite ship, and it's also my current "go to" ship when I see war targets bumbling around outside the station, since they invariably have fast tackle you can bait away from the safety of the herd, and it's fun as hell to do so :D Since the last ship I loved like this was my Vengeance, it's a fairly impressive feat for this humble Interceptor to win my affection...

Fly a Taranis. Come and hull tank with the "real men" ;)