Around 1800 eve time on the 18th January 2015 a fight was sparked between members of the Russian Stainwagon and the N3 Coalition alliances.
The fight started with Nulli Secunda and Stainwagon having a throw down as the Russian alliances try to gain space in the Esoteria region of Null Sec space. Nulli Secunda were responding to the fact that the Russian alliances had reinforced two of their R64 towers in A-CJGE. To defend these towers, Nulli Secunda formed up a fleet of Rattlesnakes with Scimitar and tackle support and Chimera carriers on standby. Other N3 alliances also formed in support of the Nulli Secunda fleet, the Darkness/Kadeshi formed up in their Ishtar fleet with assorted support wings of tackle and logistics.
The Russians decided to form up in Machariels, Apocalypse Navy Issues and Tempest Fleet Issue battleships with a small Oneiros support wing. They also brought a small Tengu gang with Scimitar support, mostly consisting of Dream Fleet members. Both groups had brought battleships doctrines in the main, which is going against the current meta of Null Sec PVP and makes them very vulnerable to 3rd party gangs in bombers. However, other parts of their coalitions had brought more conventional setups with Tengus and Ishtar’s etc.
The numbers between the two opposing fleets stood pretty even with both coalitions bringing in around four hundred and twenty pilots each at the start of the fight however more pilots were on stand-by depending on each others escalations.
The two fleets clashed on the contested towers, trading kill for kill and the N3 alliances calling in their support Chimeras along with a group of their super capital fleet to try and swing the fight once and for all into their favour which was a bold move considering they were outnumbered by the Russian fleets. Around this time, 3rd party gangs started coming in. The CFC brought in their normal assault frigate fleet made up of mostly Harpies with a large Sabre interdictor wing to bubble the expected capitals. The CFC also brought in a one hundred man Ishtar gang to help apply DPS. Pandemic Legion also turned up and brought their Slippery Pete Tengu gang while the WAFFLES brought their now expected bomber wing to the fight.
With the Nulli Secunda capitals now bubble locked by the CFC fleet Sabre wing things a. In the meantime, the Chimeras that the Nulli fleet had brought in to support their Rattlesnakes started going down one at a time. The Stainwagon fleet decided to get right on top of their opponents and started to slug it out with the Rattlesnakes while the CFC applied their DPS from range, dodging the Pandemic Legion fleet which continued to try and get warp ins on them.
At this point, the backup arrived in the form of a one hundred and eighty man Northern Coalition. Tengu fleet that had been on standby due to rumours of the CFC coming in as a 3rd party. The newly arrived NC. fleet started targeting the Stainwagon Faction Battleships,which go down to the combined fire of both the Nulli Rattlesnakes at close range and the NC. Tengu’s at long range. However, the Russian FC repositions his fleet at range and orders the fleet to reload to tremor which starts smashing into the NC. Tengu’s, killing a handful before they warp off field.
With the Russian alliances battleships now at range and Pandemic Legion Tengu’s harassing the CFC Ishtar’s, the Nulli Rattlesnakes and assorted tackle/kitchen sink switch to the CFC Interdictors which are keeping their super capitals bubbled and start clearing them off one at a time, until only seven of the original fifty-eight Sabres remain. The remaining CFC fleet cut their loses and order the withdrawal, this releases the Nulli Supers and they manage to get out to safety without any casualties.
At this time the WAFFLES bomber wing uncloaks close to the Russian battleship fleet and launch a bombing run which forces the Faction Battleships off the field and, although the Russian fleet takes little damage from the bombs due to a great warp out by their FC, they retreat to their POS in system and call it a night. With the CFC withdrawing from the fight and Stainwagon now safely within their remaining POS, the N3 coalition made sure their supers were safe and sorted out their own POS towers before leaving the field. Pandemic Legion and NC. shared a wave in local and Pandemic Legion, along with their WAFFLES, left system to head home.
While the N3 coalition definitely lost this fight on ISK, they did manage to save two of their friendly towers during the fight and also managed to destroy one of the Stainwagon towers. The N3 coalition is calling this an objective driven victory, even though they had to lose almost 104 billion ISK to get it done, not to mention they put their super capital fleet in harms way and were lucky they were able to get away with it relatively unpunished. If the CFC super capital fleet had been in the area or the Russians had been able to field their own super capital fleet, then the outcome would have been even worse for the N3.
The CFC lost just under 16 billion ISK, with most of the coming from the fact they sacrificed sixty-two Sabres to keep the supers bubbled as well as losing twenty-two Harpies and around twenty Ishtar’s during the fight. The Russians lost around eighty of their faction battleships throughout the fight and that hurt them with a loss of over 50 billion ISK. Pandemic Legion, Waffles and other randoms who also showed up to the fight lost just over a billion ISK combined.
I managed to talk to the main Nulli Secunda FC for the fight, Killah Bee and he had this to say;
Mail Lite > I understand you’re the guy to speak to about the fight last night from the Nulli side of things
Killah Bee > Yep
Mail Lite > great, can you give me a quick rundown on what led up to the fight?
Killah Bee > Sure. Well, Stain Russians have been hitting Eso for the past weeks. We’ve been defending it. Russians stated that they wanted to do a major offensive from 6 of Jan to like 15th of Jan. In that offensive, they haven’t accomplished anything since we got pretty good form ups. After their deadline ( the 15th ) it was a very quiet week. Nothing really happened. We stronted everything for US TZ and just defended it. These 2 R64’s were the first 2 timers in their time zone so we knew they were gonna form up big time.
Mail Lite > Ok, Explain to me the decision of forming up in Rattlesnakes?
Killah Bee > Rattlesnakes have been our primary BS doctrine for the whole Eso deployment. They’ve been doing really well in the past against everything russians have been fielding ( Ishtars, Napocs/ Tfi’s, Typhoons ). Just recently they’ve found a way to fight our Rattlesnakes which is sitting at like 160-170 with more TFI’s than Napocs and just volley rattles. We tried some diffrent fittings in the past to reach that far with rattles but it didn’t work out
Mail Lite > So you’re formed up and such. How did the fight go down, at what point did you bring in the Chimeras and Supers?
Killah Bee > We knew the only way we could defeat them in rattles is by getting ontop of them and releasing the full 1200 dps on them. As soon as we got that warpin and NC. scrammed most of them with their scramgus we committed. At that point we brought in triage and supers to kill as many bs as possible which is what we did.
Mail Lite > Were the Nc. scram-gus in the fight from the beginning?
Killah Bee > We knew that CFC was coming down to help SW so we got NC. ready from the beginning yes. We also knew that Gorgon might show up. But what we ended up fighting was surely more than I expected. I want to state that when we committed supers and triage odds were like 400 on our side vs about 700 on the enemy side. With them having about 200 bs against our 100.
Mail Lite > Yeah, This is definitely an outnumbered fight. Did you worry about your supers at all once you committed them?
Killah Bee > Well looking at the fact that we had about 35 supers just S2N I wasnt really worried since they could’ve tanked pretty much everything. When CFC started burning 60 man DICTOR ONLY fleets down through their WH tho we started to plan the extraction. Due to the TiDI we had plenty of time to get that organised though, so to answer your question; Yes maybe for like 10 minutes.
Mail Lite > Ok so the fight is on, you have CFC and SW against you and you bring in your back up of NC.. your losing Chimeras and Rattlers while trying to get supers organised out out of harms way. and PL. are also now arriving. Tell me what happened next
Killah Bee > At that point we were mainly focusing on getting reinforcements organised. There was no real way to save many of the rattlers so we got them killing dictors around the supers. Until the enemy started retreating.
Mail Lite > “We’re calling it a pyrrhic victory since we lost the isk efficiency war by about 10%, but saved our two towers and killed one of theirs.” was said by one of your members on reddit, would you agree with this? Would you call this a strategic victory even though you lost this ISK war?
Killah Bee > Yes I do. Looking at the fact that we were heavly outnumbered and outgunned I think loosing 100b while still killing about 75b is a very good outcome. Also even though I hate this excuse for SW 75b is way more painful than 100b for us. All hail the renting empire!
Mail Lite > Is there anything else you would like to add?
Killah Bee > Thanks everyone for showing up! Was a great brawl and the biggest fight I was main FC in. Also huge props to GE showing up in their Machariel fleet. Most funny part about that fight in my opinion the about 100 cfc dictors killed. Also DEU#1
Mail Lite > Right thanks for the info matey and thanks for taking the time to chat for me
UPDATE: Here is a video which was recently linked on Reddit by Thyger of Goonswarm Federation.
If you have anything that you think should be reported on EN24, please contact me at @mail_lite on Twitter, email at [email protected] or Eve Mail me in game.
