Tackle first, kill later.

I got a batphone last night for the first time in a while - Kakure Ryuu had found 2 Rattlesnakes running sites and idly mused about why they didn't have missiles. Of course, that wasn't my first concern - I was concerned with their death at my hands.

So we conferred about the interconnectedness of our wormhole chains and discovered that the only viable entrance was Erme, 2j from Dodixie, accessible via 14 jumps of highsec or 8 jumps of FW lowsec.

Given the majority of the lowsec piratesy people are -9 or so, our options for bringing gank in was limied and time was of the essence given the rate at which two Rattlesnakes can churn through sites. So the options narrowed down to getting the Rattlesnakes tackled and sorting out killing them later, more or less. As with most things, you can always figure out how to kill something you've tackled, but can't kill something you haven't.

So we shipped into a motley gang of frigates and burned to a N944 into Teimo, then through lowsec to Erme, where we docked in a conveniently provided Astrahus, as we were all flashies. I swapped my Thalia for a Brutix I randomly had in Villore nextdoor after a terribad Redemption Road roam some months before, and scanned my way in to the wormhole with the Astero.

We got there just in time, one rattlesnake having left field to go back to the Astrahus, but either way, we had Charles Aihaken scrammed.

Kakure landed with a Curse, to try and neut Charles out as we lost all our drones to his smartbomb, and were kept at range with the frigates. The gecko vaped our Sabre pretty much in 2 shots once it came out, no surprises, and the usual Frigs vs Snakes game started: shoot the Gecko to drive it off field, and when it gets pulled, shoot the snake to stress its tank.

Kakure brought his alts in gradually, adding a Legion and a Phantasm, and the DPS ramped up. The second Rattlesnake came back to attempt neuting us off and added a second Gecko to the mix, but we managed just fine, if it got hairy for the frigates now and then.

Zak Kazmanli
Charles Aihaken

This was Wadey Willson's first PVP in 5 years. he might have lost a Comet, but I think he's seeing the advantages of wormholes.