HERO as an entity has experienced a time of peace for the past month or so, something that the coalition deserved after almost half a year of continuous SOV grinding and brawling with entities like Providence, Unthinkables, AAA, and Pandemic Legion. In January, with the SRP wallet low for Brave and PL pulling out of Catch/Curse, Brave line members strapped in to make new ISK for the war chest, to help them prepare for the next inevitable war. This period of time also saw the rebuilding of much of the Catch infrastructure, damaged by the Pandemic Legion deployment to Curse in the post-Phoebe Eve.
Not That Simple
Whereas recently HERO has been focused on kicking Stain Russian POSes out of the way to help stock up the war chest more, the old rival that is Pandemic Legion finished cleaning XIX’s house of the SOLAR FLEET menace in both Cache and Geminate, and have now come south to base out of LGK, a border system barely six jumps out of GE-8JV, HERO’s main staging point. While Pandemic Legion came down purportedly to haze the Stain Russians due to old grudges, whispers and rumors from line members seemed to indicate that Pandemic Legion have taken another “contract” to keep HERO occupied, much like how their last deployment was “contracted”.
Initially, Pandemic Legion did just that; shoot the Stain Russians, roam against HERO and do what they always do. Soon after their deployment, however, PL set up a hostile POS in HERO’s staging system and used a blank character named “Blue lce” to spoof popular fleet commander Blue Ice’s name and warp people directly to the waiting arms of the POS. This tactic has been used to great effect, snagging Proteii, Tengus, Eagles, and even a Panther from the undock of GE-, letting them arrive into what PL has come to call “ANGLE FORTRESS”.
It is funny how much they try to fool people with fleet invites
But yeah don’t be stupid and accept fleet invites that are not requested. Stratops and such will have an advert.
They will kill you. And you will deserve being killed.
#### SENT BY Migui to All online test/allies @ 2015-02-19 17:26:52 EVE Time ####
Of course this isn’t the first time PL have done this type of thing, two months ago and also in the G8- staging system they set up a similar POS and posted a fake G8- Defense Fleet in the fleet finder which told everyone who joined to warp straight to the character ‘Hai Der’.
When members of Brave did this they got destroyed by the Pandemic legion tower. The tower managed to rack up an astonishing amount of kills as seen by this killboard link.
Banging the War Drums
On Monday, February 16th, PL made their first move by reinforcing the infrastructure hub and the station of 3GD6-8. 3GD is a vital border point between the DSS entry into Stain, and the rest of Catch; there are no other routes in or out of Stain from Catch except through there. This event was seen as inevitable considering the lack of enemies that would actually commit to fighting PL, but also worrying. Would HERO be involved in yet another Phony War between themselves and Pandemic Legion?
Nonetheless, HERO formed up heavily for the 3GD6-8 IHUB timer, bringing out almost five hundred pilots, the bulk of them in a two hundred man Moa fleet. Moas had been picked above Eagles and Tengus due to no FC being found to lead that detachment of the fleet, and all entities moved into the system. Once there, PL was reported as bringing around 70 Tempest Fleet Issues, 50 strategic cruisers, with the feeder corp of Sniggwaffe bringing a reported 50 or so arty Thrashers. HERO chose to not engage, putting two SBUs into hull before dodging the PL TFI fleet and heading home safely, sustaining almost no losses.
As if in vengeance, the next evening proved that PL was not interested in playing such games. Despite forming up a 220 man Eagle fleet, with three hundred and fifty other members scattered in three other fleets, HERO was greeted by PL dropping a 70 man slowcat fleet backed up with approximately 20-30 supercarriers as they RF’d the station. Eagles and Tengus under Blue Ice worked on de-fanging the supers by popping Fighter Bombers, but despite their attempts, the station was reinforced yet again, and put into it’s final reinforce cycle, slated to come out early on the morning of February the 22nd.
Finally, in the early hours of February the 21st, the 3GD6-8 IHUB came out of it’s final reinforcement timer. With an Eagle/Tengu fleet, Ishtar fleet, EWAR fleet, bomber fleet, and other fleets scattered about, HERO brought almost five hundred people yet again to defend their SOV. PL again brought in TFIs, backed initially with three Archons and six dreadnoughts.
With PL warping directly on top of the HERO fleet, the two sides engaged, with the dreadnoughts bizarrely tracking disrupting Tengus and Eagles as the fight went on. Despite the initial slow slog of targets not dying, the process accelerated quickly as the Tengu/Eagle fleet switched to Antimatter and the Ishtars engaged with close range drones. As more and more TFIs began to melt under the duress of the combined fleets, PL characters reshipped into Archons and cyno’d back into system, escalating further and further until at one point, sixty Archons were present on field.
As more Archons came onto field, it became harder and harder to kill the TFI fleet for HERO forces. As supers were finally deployed, they switched again to shooting fighter bombers to mitigate the damage that would be inflicted onto the IHUB, but were ultimately unsuccessful in their efforts to do so. The IHUB, having taken a large amount of damage already, died, leaving just the station timer as the only thing preventing the SOV from dropping. A full battle report can be found here.
At the same time that HERO prepares to save 3GD6-8, they also prepare for another SOV attack, this time on the system of F4R2, a system that has been hit and taken by Pandemic Legion before. This is important, as it shows that the Legion is committed to attaining their own version of “good fights”, mostly by reinforcing and taking the sov of an entity like HERO if they do not soldier on into the line of ships that are waiting to tear them apart. Yet even if they do so, the Legion may move forward and take a system anyways, to “encourage” the coalition to break itself in half trying to do back-flips to save their sovereignty, all the while farmed for kills endlessly by PL.
Whatever the future holds, one thing’s for certain; it will be incredibly bloody for at least one side in the conflict.
