'Hurricane Seraph' sighted in Black Rise

Yeah I know, my jokes are terrible

A few nights ago, I realised that when Retribution hits, my Hurricanes will probably not work as they are currently fitted (CCP are reducing PG and dropping a highslot if I remember correctly) so I decided to fly out my shield 'Cane and get it exploded for the insurance, fitted like this:

Hurricane - Classic Shield

Highs
6 x 425mm Autocannon II
2 x Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I

I'm a massive fan of the 'Cane, I just suck at flying it

Mids
2 x Large Shield Extender II
1 x Warp Disruptor II
1 x 10MN Experimental Microwarpdrive

Lows
1 x Damage Control Unit II
3 x Gyrostabiliser II
2 x Tracking Enhancer II

Rigs
3 x Medium Core Defence Field Extender I


Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) I didn't die while doing it. Infact compared to my other attempts in battlecruisers, I did fairly well. Admittedly most of my kills were frigates, but I still felt like I'd done something worthwhile instead of getting exploded within ten minutes by massive armour gangs with logi support.

Essentially I roamed around the edges of squid staging systems like Rakapas, knowing that it meant the squids may bring more reinforcements any minute, but it might also make them more overconfident. Dodging a couple of fail gatecamps (seriously, I took about 6 - 7 seconds to align in my 'Cane and they didn't catch me) I wound up in Aivonen, with Local full of squids, and D-Scan full of frigates and destroyers.

I decided there were worse ways to die, so I warped to 100km on a nearby gate and started burning off towards a planet, hoping they would get curious and come investigate. Sure enough, within two minutes or so, a Caldari Navy Hookbill lands around 200km off me, towards the gate and doesn't move for a while. He then turns and warps away. Sensing he's probably trying to get his gang a warpin right on top of me, I hit my MWD for about 20 seconds, and the second time he warps back in, he lands only 100km from me. He does the same again (warp out, warp in), but this time lands 60km off me.


Apparently bored of waiting, the rest of his gang land around him, total count including the first Hookbill, a Cruor, Executioner, Cormorant, Claw, Slicer, Thrasher, and another Hookbill. They all start burning at me, with only two of them (the destroyers) actually making any attempt to get some transversal speed going to counter my guns. Loaded with Barrage, my 'Cane can hit out to 30km, so they were going to get a shock when they got closer. The Executioner and Cruor pulled ahead of the pack, passing into my 30km range way before the rest of their gang.

I THINK THEY'RE MAD BROS

I started shooting at the Cruor first (because LOLEXPENSIVE and the Executioner only had a long point), and his lack of transversal meant he lost pretty much all his armour before he got under my guns and started shooting and neuting me. I still didn't launch my Warrior II drones, because I knew they were going to be vital in dealing with all these frigates. Instead I cycled both my neuts on the Cruor and capped him out almost instantly. Without any cap, his scram, neuts and laser died, allowing me to pull some range with my MWD and blap him while he was dead in the water. One down! The Executioner was my next problem, holding me down with long point and using a Tracking Disruptor. Unfortunately for him, he flew in too much of a straight line to actually gain any benefit from the TD, and got pretty much alphaed off the field at around 25km from me while still trying to establish an orbit. Gotta love Barrage. Problem solved.


While I had been dealing with the fast tackle, the rest of the gang was catching up, although the Thrasher was seriously lagging behind the rest (probably AB fit). The Cormorant caught up with me, got into a decent 9km orbit and starting disrupting my balls off. My guns were nowhere near hitting him. The only problem with his excellent plan was that my neuts had a 12km range. They hit him hard, annihilating his cap reserves and turning off pretty much everything that was making him safe from my guns (propulsion, disruptor). Just like the the Cruor, his speed dropped, and then he was wiped off the field too.

The Claw caught up with me while I was dealing with the Cormorant, and his tight orbit, combined with excellent cap management on his part meant I couldn't pull any range (warp scrammed) and I couldn't hit him. Counter-cycling my neuts to maximise their impact, I launched my Warrior IIs and prayed. Slowly, but surely they ground him down, with none of the other pilots apparently thinking to help their friend by killing my drones. While the Claw made a good attempt to kill most of them, he didn't have the tank to survive the few that remained and exploded as the last of my drones managed to kill him. With most of their frigate gang obliterated, the survivors decided to cut their losses and warp out (two Hookbills, a Slicer and a Thrasher), leaving me with much less ammo, one heavily damaged Warrior II, and a huge smile on my face. I grabbed the loot from the wrecks, before heading back towards Nennamaila.

Nennamaila has an awesome sun

Dropping off my loot, I saw a mention of an enemy frigate gang (another one?!) in Milita chat, and quickly offered to join in, wanting my Hurricane to finally explode gloriously. I fleeted up with two other pilots, jinko3 and Arkenai Wyrnspire (Arkenai has a blog too, which he gave me the link to, http://amongthestars-eve.blogspot.co.uk/ , though currently it's only open to certain readers apparently. Damn it Ark!) who were flying a Thrasher and a Fed Navy Comet respectively.

Reaching Korasen, we attempted to bait a small plexing frigate gang to attack, but they pretty much entirely ignored us. However, a passing Harpy pilot soon shipped up to a Ferox to come and play pewpew. He came through the gate we were sitting on and aggroed me first. I jumped back through, before realising how dumb that was, and jumped back in. I was shortly followed by a small Gallente militia gang, who'd seen the Ferox jump after us, and wanted in on the kill. With seven Gallente pilots on the field against the poor fishy Ferox, he didn't stand a chance. Boom!

Having a good giggle at finally being the blobber, rather than the blobee (I'm a bad person I know), I headed back to Nennamaila, before shipping down to my faithful Taranis and roaming out again. I soon stumbled into neutrals in Akidagi who clearly wanted a fight, but their gang was too large to fight up close. I attempted to goad their Hookbill into attacking, but a Drake landed next to him before I could attempt to kill it. Instead I burned off, and for some wierd reason a Kestrel dropped out of warp not too far from me. Swinging towards it, I overheated my guns and spewed antimatter rounds into his shields. He dropped so fast I doubt he had time to cycle his ASB.

Personally I'm looking forward to the new Crimewatch UI

Warping off due to my GCC (since I was far enough off the gate for the guns to ignore me), I bounced between safespots for 15minutes, before heading back to Nennamaila again to reship into my Hurricane (since most of the other gang were in cruisers). Jumping back into Akidagi, I tried to engineer an engagement in which I could murder something expensive before I died but attempting to catch individuals on their own was largely fruitless with an SFI and two Drakes trying to catch me.

However I did land on top of the Hookbill I had seen earlier and blapped it before the SFI landed. After that I decided not to push my luck any further, and docked back up in Nennamaila, glad to still be flying the same ship I started my roam in.

 It's not something that often happens to me ;D

Before you say it, I know most of my kills were helpless frigates. It's not my fault they derped a little ;) I just enjoyed being the winner several fights in a row, instead of my typical "win - draw - loss - loss -draw - loss - draw - win" pattern that I usually follow in fights. A nice change!

Fly safe!