AT8 Finals, Who stole mai Bhaalgorn?

First I have to thank all the RK peeps that made everything possible for our team.  We had a huge logistic, ISK, time and Sisi support backbone that made us going this far in the tourney a reality.  I'd like to thank our Diva's for keeping their mouths mostly closed in the run-up to the matches and then mercilessly smacking us and our setups/FCing/Piloting 2 seconds after our matches were over.  That's how we roll!

I think that Rote Kapelle redeemed it's poor performance in AT7 by getting to the round of 16 in AT8 and losing to the runners-up.  Unless the rules change in the next year we have already qualified for AT9.  Looking forward to that!

Congrats to PL who worked hard to obtain their victory this year, facing a rough set of teams all around and then facing the HYDRA team and making it look easy.  Even if they knew what was coming before hand in at least one match.  Professional meta-gaming is definitely a part of this tourney.  We'll see you in our local next year ;)

A brief recap of our fight from my perspective.  (Man the ISD recap is terrible)

We warped in at 0 from the beacon, me being the Flagship Bhaalgorn, Rote Drei, along with our Proteus, and Eos.  From the start the idea was to deal with the Rook's and then come back for the Myrm's.  At the outset of the fight I overheated my ECCM, MWD and burned hard for the first rook, landing solid shots taking it down quickly, the next rook followed suit but I was unable to contribute much damage thanks to the damps landing on me from the Myrms.  Meanwhile our frigate pilots tried to eliminate their frigate screen, but the HYDRA team had placed assisted warrior II's from the Myrms on their frigate screen and were promptly ripping apart our frigs.

I was now at 40km from most of the fight, the remaining Rook going one way, while the Myrms trailed after the Frigate battle.  I was unable to lock anything, damped down to a good 17km lock range.  This destroyed the effectiveness of the Bhaalgorn, locks needed to Neut, web etc!  I turned at that point and headed towards the Myrms, determined to get DPS and neuts/webs on something before I died.  As noted in our Flagship setup we did not fit a smartbomb and that was a rather large problem when the drone swarm of the Myrms closed around me. 

I was trading fire with one of the three Myrms at this point, but their logistics, still in the fight, was able to keep him alive while they focused their fire on me and burnt me down.  I was jammed a few times during that stretch but it was already over and we knew it.  Of course, as luck would have it, both webs dropped from the Flagship and were promptly looted by Hydra, who were in prime position to do so.  Congrats on the nice set of webs guys!

I motored about in a pod for a bit waiting for it all to be over, then off to the warp out point and back to TXW.

It's easy to look back at the match or any match and edit the/our setup and/or tactics and claim we could have won if we did this or that.  I'm not going to go down that route, Hydra Reloaded were clearly the better team this Sunday, shout out to fmercury of HYDRA, an old RK pilot.  It was a blast getting there, and we'll be back!  Hopefully next year the prizes will include some shiny Amarr sexy ships and not lame Caldari ones =/

Once again good fights to all the participants... well at least most of them.