Pinata Interruptus

This tale began before even our Batphone Partner (tm) realised. it seems that Archangels Inc had found their way through from J101331 (their C2) to J145715 and had found a Loot Pinata. It was quite a Pinata.

Absolutely Certain picked up the batphone when their 5 characters (including scout) were faced with 8-10 foes camping a wormhole. They don't seem to have realised that there was a Pinata extraction op going on at the time. Neither did I, but I wasn't doing research, i was hoofing it 14 jumps.

As we were coming through Molden heath, which is full of excessively long warps like Magiko, Teonusude, etc,  Archangels looted the POS in an orca and extracted the Paladin, causing a bit of puzzlement from our friends as to what was going on. Were they rolling? Were they going to YOLO the Paladin? If we'd realised what was actually going on, it may have been possible to yoink a few ships ourselves. Oh well, good luck to them.

Prolapse brought a Gila, Vaga, Huginn and 2 Scythes. SORTA had a Cynabal, Gila, shield Curse and swiftly murdered Helios. We sourced a random Onyx for interdiction. Mitchellion was lagging 3 jumps behind in his Scythe, but I was confident enough of solo Scythe that I called ready.  Our entrance was from Appen, into J145715 and we got a warp to on the connection, jumped through, and got down to business.

The initial stage of the fight, solo Scythe was fairly vital.  When I jumped in the enemy Ishtar had been blapped already, but we faced 2 Legions, Loki, Zealot. Initially we only maintained tackle on one Legion, the rest having successfully extracted before the Onyx bubbled. The rest came back in short order, concentrating fire on our Cynabal. Except the Zealot which made a beeline for the Scythe as i tried to keep the Cynabal up with heated reps, to no avail. I then had to try keeping transversal and range on the Zealot as we began picking apart the Loki. Although Iliaster was calling primaries, I had to override and call for the Zealot to die in a fire - without even a single Scythe we were going to get Fritzled. It didn't take long to blaze him down when the Gila drones got a hold of him.

However, dualboxing and trying to keep ahead of the Zealot had it's cost; I burned the AB on my Scythe, effectively turning it into a stationary asset. This caused some complications at this point as our Huginn began taking heavy fire from 2 Legions, and my heated reps weren't cutting it. Mitchellion, however, arrived on scene just in time, saving the Huginn in 65% hull. Thereafter, I had to call for our guys to reapproach Miskoranda's scythe when they were under heavy fire. There were quite a few close calls with the Curse and Huginn and the Scythe buddy, but despite what the enemy had on field, our reps were very stronk.

The Zealot was downed just in time, too, as the enemy had reshipped and the first of three Guardians began landing. Initially we tried blapping the first to land, but we didn't get him before reps from the second landed (20% armour) so we swapped to the Loki and finished him off. Then we blazed through the Legion of Malcador Oksaras despite the two Guardians best efforts. The third Guardian landed and it became a game of swapping primaries and trying to tip the Guardian's cap chain out of whack with the neuts from the Curse. This went on for about ten minutes until we managed to blindside them and with a bit of judicious overheat HOOCOOH went down. Lurker Akiga tried extracting along with his buddy, but he failed....just as a Vindicator dropped onto grid like a bawss....and swiftly died in a fire. Again, just a bit too late.

The analysis? We had stuff just in time for everything except the Cynabal, and they landed the components of their gang just a bit too late. Their Guardian fits weren't spectacular either, with only 800mm plates. Judicious use of T2 ACR's there would allow 1600mm plates to be fitted and up the buffer considerably. That said, if you are going the 800 plate Guardian, you have to get T2 Trimarks, and MWD fit, and then it has equivalent buffer and great maneuverability....but isn't for dualboxing.

Finally, on dualboxing, burning out a prop mod is a sad reality of split attention and being under pretty dire pressure. If we lost that initial Scythe we were fooked, and it was pretty close on the Huginn (pulsating rectum for Herpy), so your gang has to be flexible enough to respond to a call like that. Your logi bros sometimes have to be protected - if they ask you to get a tackler off them, it sometimes serves your interests to do that.

Finally...we dunked 4.7B, but I'm pretty sure Archangels inc. made out like bandits from that POS, so we'll call that ISK neutral for them. Good fight!