Pure Blind
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Pure Blind |
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Pure Blind “Guys, fear is your only God in this game and MC are all atheists. Remember that!” – Seleene [BDCI] |
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For the longest time, veterans of our alliance had often wondered and looked forward to seeing “MC Unleashed” in a full blown 0.0 conflict. That time had now come. MC capital pilots rarely have the luxury of being told anything other than were to undock from and how many isotopes they need to get back there. Reactions upon popping out in Pure Blind were confused at first, but all soon became clear. Being a Gallente outpost, P-2TTL had plenty of office space for potential allies but most importantly it was within JDC4 Dread jump range for all of Fade and most of Deklein, including nine station systems. We did not begin our invasion in P-2TTL with any other intention than possibly pulling some of the Northern forces back from their incessant attacks on Querious and Fountain. It worked all too well as D2 and half a dozen satellite alliances slammed into our first offensive with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball on March 31st. Over the next three hours we fought what I still consider to be one of the most telling battles of the campaign. Dozens of Northern battleships and hundreds of support threw their might against four MC motherships and over a dozen MC carriers. Never before had we been tested like this. The initial battle on the E-Z3ZX stargate was a complete train wreck. Our motherships and carriers shredded the first wave of battleships as they tried to get out of the large bubble on the gate. Then SERA and Cult of War came in through the gate behind the enemy and began vaporizing their support. As the targets at the gate began to clear, we got word of a massive undocking back at the station. An entire CORE alliance fleet had been bottled up in the station for over 24 hours. Sov in the system was neutral but MC held the station so once they undocked, there was no turning back. The CORE fleet undocked right into a massed group of MC support and interdictors. Our small BS fleet (number around 10) kept them interested and pinned at the station for the 30-40 seconds it took for our motherships and carriers to arrive. What followed was another systematic slaughter. Somewhere in all of this, Tom McCash had set off a Doomsday back at the E-Z gate and the one MC mothership that had remained there reported, “The gate just went nuts. There are more of them coming!!” Local hit 270. With our gang numbering 56, someone actually said on TS, “Well, they sure as hell aren’t in Fountain anymore!". We laughed… and then warped in everything we had right on top of them. If the first wave of the attack was impressive, the second was utterly crushing. Even with “BS Only” selected on my overview there were over 60 targets. Chaos reigned supreme as our support fleet warped in and out over and over while the motherships and carriers continued to lay waste to the battlefield. Lag was hitting everyone and the enemy was focusing fire on Neurotic Cat’s Nyx. He never went below 85% armor but local continued to rise… then a cyno beacon went up and enemy cap ships started to jump into the gate. I called the warp out. As local swelled above 300 and we sat at a POS catching our breath, there was no battle plan other than, “Make them pay for it!”. Enemy comms seemed to be riotously mis-managed. Our support guys kept lighting off cynos at friendly starbases and watching group of 4-6 ships warp in to their doom. Finally, the D2 capital fleet began to shoot at one of our towers in the system but one of their dreads, a Phoenix, had been caught by a small warp bubble on the warp in. We warped everything we had to the trapped dread and began pummeling him, eventually putting him into structure before (it seemed) enemy carriers got into remote rep range and saved him. It was during this engagement that we lost our only BS of the fight. We soon realized that the number of enemy dreads (less than 12) would not be enough to put our tower into reinforced very quickly. Word had also come that YouWhat had heard of the fight, now entering its second hour, and was moving up a fleet of 30+ BS and support as fast as they could from Cloud Ring. Acting on this, we decided to press the attack and warped our three motherships (we’d lost one to RL by now) to within 20k of the attacking dreads and carriers. Waagaa got a scramble on an enemy carrier and we went to work turning him to scrap. Our support fleet swarmed over the area, adding their scramblers and guns to the equation. Even with the enemies overwhelming numbers, the tide was turning and both sides seemed to be sensing it. Coalition forces responded to our attack by coming in at range to the tower and doing everything they could. The sixteen medium guns on the starbase continued to spit death and white explosions lit up the enemy fleet every half a minute… yet still they came and continued to try to chase us off. Our support fleet, some of them in their second or third ship of the night, got even more bold (suicidal?) and began attacking the enemy BS fleet directly. By now local had dropped to 230 but then spiked up by 50 – YouWhat had arrived. After a brief navigational error (wrong tower, guys!), the –Y- fleet came in less than 50km off of the Coalition fleet just as an MC Interdictor dropped a bubble on the main BS force. Five minutes later, there simply was no enemy support fleet to speak of. They’d done their job though, putting enough pressure on the MC tacklers to allow most of the Coalition capitals a chance to jump out. As local dropped back to near 100, and all the reds had gone, the state of euphoria that washed over our TS was incredible. Three solid hours of adrenaline had resulted in a victory we’d never expected. Enemy wrecks littered the system like so many snowflakes and salvage operations continued well into the next morning. Many players on both sides of the campaign say that the war was already over after P-2 fell. In terms of a single battle, the absolute domination of the attacking force was never equaled again: 248 ships killed; 44 ships lost 65 BS killed; 1 BS lost Of special note was our Support FC who went from his Rokh, to a Crusader to a Rifter and finished off the night calling targets in a Vigil which soon ran out of ammo! The next day was spent on logistics and turning P-2 into an unassailable fortress. It would be our new home for the next several weeks. Word of the victory soon spread. Combined with the “F-T Incident”, Alliance morale was soaring. We decided not to waste any time and our eyes turned North to Fade. 1 April 07 – MC claims P-2TTL |
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Pure Blind | |
Introduction - Prelude to War - Querious & Lonetrek - Period Basis - Tribute - Pure Blind |