Flying By The Seat of my Pants

Due to the wife being out of town for a couple days and the kids being gone to the grandparents on the weekend, I got some extra Eve time last week and I used it as best I could.

I started the week looking for trouble in a Vagabond called Frilless. I had trouble finding anyone to fight, chasing off a Dramiel and a Daredevil in separate occasions in Heydieles, but then scanned a hostile Condor and Daredevil fighting a friendly Firetail and Thrasher. With my crashing the party the enemies turned to run but I got a quick point on the Condor and ripped him up pretty quick.

I then heard of a gang doing the gate camp thing in Akidagi and I headed that direction, but while I was sorting out comms in an empty system I learned two things: I do not have Incursion rats on my overview settings and Incursion rats hit HARD. One Vagabond down. *sad face*

I broke out a Falcon for the gate camp, got there successfully, and got some loyalty points for targeting a hostile that jumped in (but I failed to get on the killmail).

* * * * *
I got sloppy the next fight. I was docking back in base in Heydieles and saw a Hurricane, Thrasher, and Stiletto hanging around outside. I wanted a fight badly so I undocked in a refitted Sleipnir with X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster and locked the Thrasher and 'Cane up. Now, a smart move at this point since they are not aggressing me would have been to check local to see if they had friends, or get a different ship and see if I could lure them and spread them out across the system.

But my move was to try and kill the Thrasher without checking for more hostiles and as the Thrasher warped off, I compounded my foolishness by engaging the Hurricane. And that's when the shit hit the fan as the Thrasher came back with a second Hurricane, a Legion, and a Stabber Fleet Issue. Doh! I deaggressed and tried to dock but I ran out of charges in my ASB and went down. *bigger sad face*

* * * * *

I learned my lesson a bit the next time. I heard of a hostile fleet in nearby and took out a Thorax to investigate. Sure enough, there they were on the Abune gate in Heydieles, about 10-12 ships of various types. I let a few aggress me on this side of the gate and jumped through. I aligned to the sun and when I saw local go up I warped hoping to get something small to follow. Sure enough a Jaguar warped in on my and I tried to catch him but he was fit for speed and got out of my warp scrambler's range before my target lock resolved.

Realizing I was not going to win this one I deployed the ECM drones and aligned for a celestial. However a Curse and Talos landed and just as the Jag's point was broken the Talos pointed me and it was all over.

* * * * *

I almost forgot, I was in Heydieles and saw an Incursus in a minor plex. I grabbed my Dramiel and went after him and it was a Shadow Cartel pilot (not Kadavr Black Guard fortunately) looking for a fight. My Dramiel allows me to fight at range when needed so I was pinging away on him with my drones when a second Cartel Incursus warped in, forcing me to retreat. No kill, no loss.

Fortunately for my killboard stats, he went and got killed by sentry guns within 15 minutes.

* * * * *

Having a bad week so far, I undocked Saturday morning in a Catalyst I've had sitting around for ages and went hunting in plexes for enemy frigs. I chased some Merlins around for a while in Akidagi, but in Notoras I found nothing but two hostiles and two plexes. Warping towards one with a Manticore stealth bomber, I activated the gate and flung into the plex to see him still there. MWD on I burned towards him and I don't know if he tried to warp out but was too slow or if he thought his tech 2 frig could take my tech 1 destroyer, but we engaged and had a rare good fight. I was target painted and cap was burning quickly, but he did not have a MWD to escape me and I was able to advance in and get into optimal for antimatter ammo. He exploded as I was about 10% cap and dipping into structure.

* * * * *

Emboldened by my success the previous morning, I undocked in the same Catalyst Sunday morning and went on the same route. In Kedema I saw a couple war targets, lots of neutrals, and a minor plex off in the distance. I warped to it but it was a long warp and I got distracted by a blog post. I landed at the plex acceleration gate and saw two Cormorants, one neutral and one an outlaw. In my tired daze I was pretty slow at activating the gate because I thought I would check out to see if the two pilots were in the same corporation. Not my best moment.

Well, they both start locking and pointing me. Ah shit, I say to myself. I try the gate but the points do not allow that escape route, so I hit the MWD which mercifully still roars to life and burn away. I'm faster than both of them so I quickly pull range as I hit the bottom of my armour. Maybe I can do something with this, I think confidently.

Then a third Cormorant arrives and starts burning at me. Too late I realize he's fast, faster than me even, and before I can align and warp I'm pointed again and quickly dispatched through the rest of my points. I never even locked and fired. Really not my best moment.

* * * * *

Four losses, one of them really preventable (WTB, new Sleipnir), and two kills (but three killmails :P ). Not a bad week for a bad PvPer trying to get out more.