On the 16th June at around 18:00 EVE Time an engagement took place in the Amarr Faction Warface Lowsec system of Arzad. The last time these entities were reported on was back in this post resulting in a fight in Bosboger with over 30 Billion ISK destroyed.
This fight involved only 4 capital losses from 2 different entities; Dead Terrorists [IKILU] and That Escalated Quickly [M8WTF], but a whole host of others were involved.
On one side we have [M8WTF], Flex Point [FXP], NEOS Fleet [NEOS] and The Periphery [RIFT] against [IKILU], Shadow Cartel [SHDWC], Immediate Destruction [.IED] and multiple smaller entities assisting each. As there was clearly a wide range of groups involved I have contacted multiple Fleet Commanders and Diplomats to determine the series of events leading to and during the event.
[IKILU] Alliance Executor Letelio Denmun, who were the group who had the most pilots on field, provided the following report.
As I expect you know, the low-sec area around Siseide (including parts of Heimatar, The Bleak Lands and Devoid) is fairly interesting at the moment. [IKILU] is just about the largest alliance in the area, however, recently, our attempts to expand and maintain our status here has come against some pretty fierce resistance from the other alliances living in this area (primarily [M8WTF], [FXP] and [RIFT]). Depending on the time of day, together they generally nearly match or marginally exceed the size of our fleets whilst the quality of their pilots and leadership means that any mistakes we make on the battlefield will be skilfully and uncompromisingly exploited, often with disastrous consequences for us.
Tuesday’s blood bath in Arzad was initiated by the coming out of reinforce of one of our moons there. A smaller battle had commenced on that same moon the previous Sunday in which we out escalated the capital escalation of the enemy fleet and forced them off the field with a relatively clean win. Of course, when they reinforced the same moon again later that night, we knew that round two was unlikely to be quite as easy especially insofar as the timer was just about perfect for the mix of Europeans and Russians in the [M8WTF], [FXP], [RIFT] group.
On Tuesday evening the timer approached as the enemies staging system began to creep above 100 in local compared to around 80 in our own Siseide local. In the back of our minds, meanwhile, is the concern that other outsider groups might also be on route, that is, insofar as we have seen entities as wide raging as Snuff Box, Triumvirate and various null-sec Russian alliances show up in previous engagements, generally with [IKILU] at the top of their target lists. Fortunately for us, aware of the significance of this timer, [SHDWC] had agreed to bring a fleet of around 40 T3s & Guardians to support the [IKILU] fleet which, including our allies in [.IED], numbered around 65 T3s, Guardians and T1/T2 Support.Once again the numerical advantage fell to us, however, this was little conciliation as the [M8WTF], [FXP], [RIFT] fleet bridged into Arzad slightly earlier than expected and setup on grid with a staggering 40-45 T3s, 21 Guardians, 2 Triage Archons, 5 Bhaalgorns and around 10 Celestis all under the cover of a Cyno-Inhibitor. Rushing onto grid, to save the tower, the [IKILU] and [SHDWC] elements of our fleet landed over 100km from each other, with the isolated [SHDWC] logistics initially taking noticeable losses, that is, until the two elements of our fleet moved into range of one another.
Even as our logistics began to hold it became clear that breaking anything with 2 Archons and 21 Guardians on-grid would be essentially impossible. Somewhat riled by the unfavourable start to the engagement a rushed decision to jump in ‘’available’’ dreadnoughts was made in an attempt to put some pressure on the enemy Carriers and Bhaalgorns that were causing us the most difficulty. Uncertainty about the integrity of our remaining logistics also led to the jumping in of our own group of Triage Carriers. The fight progressed uneventfully in the minute it took for the dreadnoughts to warp onto grid (remember the Cyno-Inhibitor), however, the peace was shattered when it emerged that our Dreadnought ‘Escalation’ had consisted of no more than two Revelations whose low-DPS and non-existing Cap-Stability meant that they amounted to nothing more than a short-lived diversion for the enemy DPS. It later emerged that we had essentially overstretched ourselves in an attempt to match the enemy fleet, Capital pilots were mostly on-grid already in Logistics and T3s.
Despite the lack of Dreadnought DPS, we tried to break the enemy Archon that had gone into Triage, however, he came out just in time to receive support from the other Carrier and Guardians. Fearful that this dynamic might continue indefinitely we hastily attempted to arrange more dreadnoughts to jump into the grinder, that is, until one of our Titan pilots heroically jumped into the fray and dispatched the first enemy triage. At this point the fight began to turn in our favour, that is, as the occasional T3 and Bhaalgorn began to break. Nonetheless, it was far from won, especially as a substantial number of our logistics were destroyed as they accidentally strayed directly into range of the enemy fleet and, disastrously, out of range of our own triage. Now we were fighting just on the edge of our Triage range with a severely compromised Guardian chain and, in a staggeringly bold move, the second enemy Carrier pinged back in closer to his fleet that were trying to draw us away from our static Carriers.
The lone carrier, however, was unable to survive against our sub-capital DPS for very long, whilst our own Triage also began to reposition closer to the fray. Just as ours had done, the enemy Guardians took heavy losses as they consistently strayed too close to our DPS. Consequently, after around 30 minutes of fighting the enemy fleet were completely unable to catch reps and were losing T3s and Bhaalgorns in quick succession. It had cost us two Dreadnoughts, a doomsday and most of our Guardians to get there but after around 40 minutes the enemy fleet, having pulled substantial range, opted to warp out and leave the field to us.
Despite the loss of two Dreadnoughts the overall efficiency fell to the [IKILU], [SHDWC] and [.IED] side. Nonetheless, this is a win we are unlikely to brag about, especially insofar as most of our losses were a result of simple mistakes that the enemy fleet were skilfully quick to exploit. It was, however, a long and enjoyable fight.
This modified report shows the results of the engagement mentioned by Letelio with the first attempt at trying to kill the [IKILU] tower. Even though [IKILU] and allies lost more capitals, [M8WTF] and friends did lose the most ISK and clearly the objective. As well as this engagement there was a BLOPs fight between the same entities from 2 days previous which Dhu’gall from [M8WTF] provided the following information on:
Our friends of [RIFT] were about to RF one of the [IKILU] poses for a fight on the weekend. However being based out of Gulmogorod and with [IKILU] gate camping the Gul gate in Amamake we set up a trap for them. [IKILU] at that point had a lot of kitchen sink ships on the gate. [RIFT] went out with a few Navy Apocs two Guardians and a cyno to engage the [IKILU] gate camp. At that point, we already knew [IKILU] would bring at least 3 Archons and 3 Blackops to drop on [RIFT]’s faction battleships. Once [IKILU] engaged them, they lit their cyno jumping in the three archons and blackops, which was our call in sign. After the cyno was lit we jumped eight blackops and a triage carrier to engage them. We went through them like a hot knife through butter. There was pretty much no organization on their end whatsoever until after they left the three archons on grid and reshipped to Bhaalgorns, Mega Navys and Guardians. Sadly we had to sacrifice the Dread that we had jumped in somewhere in the middle of the fight, to provide the damage to break the archons, which wasn’t quite enough. Aswell as the triage archon. Extracting the rest was no problem thanks to MJDs.
With both of these engagement happening before the most recent slug fest it was already in [M8WTF]’s favour with [M8WTF] having lost only 17.1 Billion ISK compared to [IKILU] who lost 17.6 Billion ISK, showing only a marginal lead.
Hydro9, Fleet Commander for [M8WTF] and allies, along with Dhu’gall provided the following report:
We RF’ed a [IKILU] POS owned by one of their alt corps on friday, which then left RF on sunday around 12:00 eve time. Since it was so early and our FC’s would be at work at that time we didn’t have an op planed for it until very early sunday when our main FC Hydro9 said he would be there for the fleet. So we went out despite most people not knowing there would be a fight so as usual we would definitely be fighting them outnumbered. The result was basically a dreadnought brawl and we all know how those end: Does your fleet have more dreads? If yes you win, if no well, get a few new dreads.
After that we decided to RF another moon a day later to come out for today’s (tuesday) fight. Since it’s a Cadmium, we were sure they would come again, this time however we would prepare.
We ([M8WTF], [FXP] & [RIFT]) decided to go for T3s (Proteus) and Guardians with Bhaalgorn and two Triage Archon support, bridging them shortly before the tower would exit RF to Arzad and position us on the tower. [IKILU] brought a similar fleet though with more Legions and their friends [.IED] bringing fully ECM fitted Sacrileges and adding in five Archons to support their fleet. [SHWDC] came in on [IKILU]’s side with a Proteus/Guardian setup significantly buffing their forces which would have otherwise been a clean 1:1 fight.
[IKILU] and [.IED] landed a couple of minutes after us on grid, positioning themselves just slightly behind the tower about 60km away from us. About a minute or two later [SHDWC] warped in on the other side of the tower at about 30km away from us. After some brawling we had one of our Archons go into Triage and two [IKILU] Revelations jumped in shooting our triage. The dreads were quickly primaried by us. With our triage carrier about to go into structure we killed the first dread. The second dread was neuted out just in time for our carrier to leave triage in deep structure and receive reps by the other one. Realizing they could not break our triage carriers, [IKILU] jumped one of their alt Titans at range to doomsday our now in triage carrier. After that it was quite some more brawling with many Guardians dying from both sides.
Unfortunately they still had the support of their five archons forcing us to leave the field with more and more of our guardians and also T3’s dying. Good fight all around, wasn’t the first and won’t be the last.
Finally I approached a previous contact from [FXP], hitman xz, who said they were “just invited to murder a POS in T3’s and promised a great fight in the old school style, which actually happened. We were just very glad to take part as the enemy showed himself very well and did not let us down.”
He also provided the following video:
This image shows the Archon which was DD’d by the Erebus seen in the above video.
Click for Killmail
When the dust finally settled and all the killboards had finished counting it showed that [M8WTF] and allies lost 23.27 Billion ISK compared to 18.18 Billion ISK for [IKILU] and friends, shown on this battle report. When combined with the statistics mentioned above it puts [M8WTF] with a total of 40.37 Billion ISK lost and [IKILU] at 35.78 Billion ISK.
The most common fleet compositions used by the lowsec combatants are armor Tech 3 Strategic Cruisers, namely the Proteus, with triage Carrier and Dreadnaught support. These vessels are good at dealing a large amount of damage whilst having a large tank and maneuverability compared to their Battleship counterparts who can be quickly out positioned and destroyed once pinned down. [IKILU] made good use out of their Titan in this engagement as the enemy had nothing in place to provide tackle and hold it in place, let alone having enough damage to kill it.
This is clearly not the first fight in the region and surely won’t be the last. We will likely have something to write about again soon!
Updates:
Paquito from [SHDWC] has now provided the following information:
[IKILU] asked us to form for them a few hours before the timer when hostile staging systems totalled 90 to their own 30. We formed T3s to be compatible and hopped over. [M8WTF] were on grid first, followed by [IKILU] at a pounce. [IKILU] warped down to the tower as we came out of warp on the rusrus celesti. Unfortunately their logi landed 80 off ours, so we lost quite a few guardians before they got in rep range.
For the vast majority of the fight, everyone was tanking. We switched back and forth from dps to logi and back, each time killing a few logi and then testing dps tank. [IKILU] drop in 2 poorly selected revelations which manage to get the first Archon to very low structure before one dies, other gets neuted out and then the Archon comes out and gets reps. At which point we were really struggling to find a viable way forward until suddenly; Erebus, Archon goes down.
We hold the other Archon on grid while we chase their fleet that is aligning off. After a few minutes they turn around and re-engage. Their Archon breaks free and bails. Things progress as before, dps tanks holding steady. After a few kills, their Archon lands again and we go for him straight away, downing him quickly. DPS tanks mostly still holding though so another few guardians get culled and then the tipping point is reached, dps starts breaking. They start aligning off again, so we chase, killing what we can and after a half dozen prots they warp off.
They kept saying that “if we didn’t come it would of been a fair fight, etc etc.” However their fleet was noticeably superior to the [IKILU]/[.IED] fleet, minus us. With us there, it was even as the BR shows in my opinion.
I would also like to add a little BR to the end. Tonight we did a t3 destroyer roam and after doing the loop around provi, we came back through metro. After the ruskie incursion bears docked up, we found a mixed [FXP] sac/t3 fleet with 4 guardians waiting for us on a gate. There were maybe 15~ and we were around 24, we gave it a go, and the fight progressed as expected. We couldn’t break anything and we started to lose a few destroyers after 2 minutes, local spikes and [M8WTF] land on grid with another 15 t3s. At which point we start aligning off, and eventually bail once noone else was tackled. They were very satisfied with this great victory, considering it payback for yesterday’s defeat. We were very pleased to give them this morale boost and look forward to accommodating them any way we can in the future. Here is the battle report though it doesn’t show all of us because we didn’t kill anything so it’s a bit meh.
A video of the fight from the [SHDWC] perspective:
The following video is from the engagement which occurred on the Sunday mentioned above:
I would like to thank all groups involved for their responses and hope I did you justice.
[If you have any comments or intel you would like to provide please contact me at [email protected] or via an in-game mail]
