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.

Eve AT8, Days 3 & 4

Thanks to some RL(whats that!) commitments this weekend I wasn't able to watch nearly any matches as opposed to nearly every match I watched last weekend.  Well other than Sunday where I was able to be in ours AND see quite a few.

Statistics...

I kept up my average of being near .500, I think I was at .56 this weekend, a slight improvement, but once again I got it right where it counts!

Day 1 short recap,

• Surprised that NOIR. Lost again
• Erebus showing very poor form not showing up for their match, but I expected more people to do the same given the long odds of advancing.  I wish STENT had shown up with less ships so they got more points and advanced, especially if they had been ranked 32, then we would get to shoot them again!
• Co2 breaking out the Freki to place the slap down on ROL!  Super expensive match, on both sides.  Co2 loses their Flagship as well.  Brutal.

Day 2 short recap,

• HYDRA handles Old Intentions in what could have just been a setup match.  But doesn't seem to be, just a bad setup VS bombers.
• Dead Terrorists plow through The TB alliance in short order, ending their attempt at a run into the next round.  Tough loss to the Tusker Bastards!
• Unaffiliated and IISL traded blows in a great match, sad I only caught it on the replays.  Brutal fight that left both sides with few survivors, IISL won eventually, sealing them into the next round.
• Dystopia fight goes crazy.  What a great out of the box setup there, Kadeshi failpoints and bring 101 it looks like.  Either way still a wild and crazy fight.

 Our fight vs AAA was a great one in my humble opinion.  Even if Kil2 got it very wrong when commentating about our Harb and then kept bringing up the beam harb.  To put a seal on that, it was pulse fit, and you should be able to tell that given how fast the guns were cycling on and firing, beams have a much longer cycle time.

The whole fight from my perspective;
The fight starts and it takes a painfully long time for me to lock anything, so I align for the Sun, locks come up(heart pounding) so canes webbed first, neuts on all three prot, guns on primary(started out as one of the canes while our support worked on theirs), warriors out on DD then back on primary.  Notice the prot's getting close(Bombers dead now), turn off the web on the other cane, swap web over to Sky'stale's Proteus, turned off ECCM, flipped on cap booster as my cap was already flagging.  Look at gang window to see damage spread over a few targets, nobody really needs help, keep warriors out there.

Cane down, follow the primary over to the next cane, neuts still on Proteus, trying to angle towards their Oneiros who slips into range.  I get a neut on him as well for a few cycles before swapping back to the Prot trying to keep them capped out, curse and I trying to keep them cycle dry.  Notice TD's on my Bhaal, from one of the Proteus(how long has that been going on?), check optimal of guns, adjust crystals to go back doing reduced damage.

Second cane down, warriors come back, Their tackle somehow dead, I drop rep drones to head over to Bacch wondering if they are going to get there in time as he drops into structure.  Check cargo then, of 27 cap boosters ~15 remain at that point.  Proteus make their brake for HEROGUARDIAN, I send my rep drones over to him pretty fast after that, wondering why the hell he's burning away from me while I flip on and overheat the MWD to try to keep the Prot close and webbed.  Close the distance on the Proteus and get them webbed, takes forever to get up to speed, seems even longer knowing the distance is increasing (peaked out at 37km) meanwhile HEROGUARDIAN tackled, heavy damage, into structure, but still alive! First proteus going down aaaand down.  HEROGUARDIAN still benny-hilling around in super low structure as I get back into overheated web range of the Prot's now at my full speed, HEROGUARDIAN skips out of range of their guns and lives for a bit longer.  He still doesn't turn back towards the Bhaal so I have to keep f-ing with my MWD to try to keep up.(turn around HEROGUARDIAN you bastard! is what I'm thinking, only words that come to my mouth are Proteus, webbed.)  A Prot times a cap boost perfectly, MWD to slide out of web range + 1 gun cycle does in HEROGUARDIAN.  I pound approach on their Oneiros who is now at 17km, neut him with my free neut, down to 3 cap boosters left in cargo and 6 in cap booster, little cap left so I keep the boosters coming.

We fire on the Oneiros and Proteus, I swap my guns to the Oneiros to get it through structure, missing mostly, stupid TD's, but he dies anyways.  Both Prot are now ~10km from the Bhaal but under webs and neuts, as the second Prot hits structure I'm out of cap boosters, turn off the neuts and pulse guns to keep the webs active, shutting down the DC to get that 1 cap every 30 seconds of something from it.  Pull rep drones, launch warriors.  I try to push a little range looking for cap boosters in the wrecks, can't find any, get inside 8km from Proteus while doing so, turn and move back out... slowly.  Second Prot down now, working on the last one.

Last one is double webbed, I pulse my guns to keep him webbed, game over.

Nearly have a heart attack as I come out of the battle haze, most of my modules are >50% heat damage, guns at 94%.

This morning I listen to the vent recording, realize how little I actually heard that wasn't important to me at the time and have a little chuckle at HEROGUARDIAN's voice after he dies.  Seriously goes up like 2.5 octaves.

Anywho mad props to AAA for the best fight!  Once again greatly civilized in local during and after the fight.  Was such a good match up and fight!  TD's really hurt DPS, and damn cap management is a pain!

Next round matchups were just posted, so on to my next post!