Two kills, two pods, and happy with them too

It’s great to live in Catch, these days! The Initiative has vanished from our area of operations and sovereignty is being taken bij -A- (welcome back!), Squee and others. CVA and others roam the area. It’s a target rich environment! Since we joined Mildly Intoxicated we kind of missed the gatecamp/small roam kind of pvp we were used to. Of course we participated in the coalition level deployments to the north and more recently to the southwest, and some of our guys liked the large fleets, but prefer smaller fleets. I’m very happy to report we’re seeing more and more of the small gang stuff right now!

Yesterday evening a small group of NOFAD pilots - just four of us - set up a few drag bubbles in TA3T-3, put a few cans on the landing points at the bubbles and began camping. Some neutrals and hostiles travelled through, but none on a path that would have them land in the bubbles. Soon, however, a CVA Nemesis entered and sure enough, he landed in the bubble and was uncloaked by a can.. 8 km away from me. I think he didn’t realize he was uncloaked until we locked him, but my missiles had some trouble finishing him off quickly enough. Corp mate Simon Jenkins (a.k.a. Ez) helped me do the job: one dead Nemesis.  The pod got away, but hey I wasn’t complaining: 100 million ISK in loot isn’t all that bad for this kind of kill. I’m still looting the wreck as, all over sudden, the pod reappears at the exact same location! Huh? Second attempt via the same route..? Still forgot to bounce off a celestial..? Whatever the case may be, the pod dies too. I quickly bring the loot back to station and swap ECM-drones to Warrior II’s.. I need more DPS.

Some time after that, a lonely Hurricane enters TA3T-3. He comes through the gate behind the bubbles, so there’s no way he’ll end up in them. He warps off but remains on dscan. After a bit the Hurricane disappears from local and it turns out he jumped to E-YJ8G which is a dead end system which we also own. I follow behind and wait for him at a tac off the TA3T-3 gate and indeed, after a few minutes he appears at the gate.. but he doesn't jump. I want to push him through because our guys are waiting on the other side, so I warp to him, lock him up, web him and begin pummeling him with missiles. Sadly I don’t have a point on this thing.. he doesn’t return fire but waits until he hits half shields, at which point he warps off. Some other alliance guys join in the hunt and the cat and mouse game continues: he warps to gate, sees one of our guys, warps off, warps back to gate and so on. Finally he smells his chance and jumps through to TA3T-3, directly into our impromptu gate camp on the other side. Dictor bubble goes up, I lock him up again and then.. he just vanishes. Turns out he had a cloak! He didn’t use it until then and it took us completely by surprise. His speed should be something like 24m/s under cloak but still be don’t manage to uncloak him, to our embarrassment. When he finally does, about ten minutes later, he’s back at the E-Y gate and he quickly jumps. Back to square one! We wait for a long time and just as we’re ready to call it quits, he warps to 70 km off the TA3T-3 gate in E-YJ8G, on a direct line from the station and cloaks there. That was too easy! Our interceptor Magister Wu repeats his warp and lands in the same spot. It takes him about 30 seconds to decloak the Hurricane. Multiple dictor bubbles go up and the area is swarmed with drones to prevent him from cloaking again. This time the Hurricanes destruction is certain, and indeed, it explodes shortly after. His pod dies too, after we make sure everyone will be on the killmail.

Four kills. I know it’s nothing spectacular, but it was a lot of fun and a refreshing break from the large coalition deployment fleets. Happy to be back in Catch!