Unbeknownst to some in New Eden, war has erupted in Metropolis between the self-styled ‘Good Guys Coalition’ and Dead Terrorists over valuable moons. The war, which started in December, has slowly been escalating, eventually leading to Shadow Cartel deploying to the area in order to help Dead Terrorist keep hold of their assets, and push back against the newly formed coalition. I took this as an opportunity to sit down with CJ Gallante, of Did He Say Jump, and Captain Gordon, of Uncommon Denominator, two of the main figureheads of the Good Guy Coalition, to get their take on the situation in Metropolis.
Dracos Rhaghar: Hey guys, and welcome.
Captain Gordon and CJ Gallante: Hey Dracos, Thanks for having us.
Dracos Rhaghar: I’d like to direct my first question at Gordon. You guys seem to have appeared out of nowhere. Who exactly are Uncommon Denominator, and where did you come from?
Captain Gordon: I would say we are a merger of the leadership from two different old-school alliances, our primary fleet commander is Cercis InoAtari, formerly of Cruis3rs Cr3w, formerly one of the more successful NPSI communities, and another corporation, Synaptic Void.
We were an old-school, experienced group, and I came into contact with Cercis a long time ago. I spoke to him in real life about coming back to the game, and building something special with me, and we agreed to build Empyrean Bulwarks. We grew so quickl with my recruitment and Cercis’ old corp-mates rallying to his call that we gained 50 members in little over a week. We looked for friends and made an alliances with other corporations of our size and that shared our aspirations. Previously, before forming the alliance, we had approached Dead Terrorists, wanting to work with them, but they told us, impolitely, that they wouldn’t work with us, so we decided to fight them for content.
Dracos Rhaghar: So after being rebuffed by Dead Terrorists you found yourselves alone in the area, with no allies, as a newly formed alliance?
Captain Gordon: We have always looked at working with people who were like-minded. We didn’t want to do what everybody else does, show up to an area, and randomly start shooting everyone, because you will either enrage everyone, or build too many blues. We wanted to be able to shoot people in our region. And after being dismissed by Dead Terrorists, Fetid wanted to know us, and did blue us for a while. Of course, Dead Terrorists did not like that, and forced Fetid to reset our standings. we got to know that Dead Terrorists were choking content out of the area, and you had to fight them if you wanted content. We started fighting Dead Terrorists, but it got to the point that they wouldn’t fight us unless they had shadow Cartel support. We knew we had to find someone to work with to counter Dead Terrorists’ batphone.
Dracos Rhaghar: And I assume that this is where you opened contact with Did He Say Jump?
Captain Gordon: Of course, before we had even formed, Did He Say jump were busy fighting Dead Terrorists alone, and we had a few friends in there we were talking to. We didn’t want to jump straight into that big fight, but we started to take moons in our area, and not long after that, Fetid turned their back on Dead Terrorists and began fighting alongside Did He Say Jump. It was at this point that our target moons switched over to Fetid control. We still hadn’t opened diplomatic talks with either alliance, but we received word that they were in a big fight, offered our help, and dropped our dread fleet, helping Did He Say Jump. We were bonded by fire.
Dracos Rhaghar: CJ, tell me a little about Did He Say jump?
CJ Gallante: Well I have only been with Did He Say Jump for around 2 months, so I’m not really sure on the history of the alliance, and its interesting that I have had this role thrust upon me. Did He Say Jump have been around since 2006, and these guys are great. They have played the game for years, and to be able to come in and be part of that is pretty fucking great. Did He Say Jump have always been active in the region, and have been fighting Dead Terrorists for years, ever since they came to the region. Did He Say Jump owned more moons in the region, but Dead Terrorists took a lot of moons from them. We have fought Dead Terrorists alone. AOS Brendan wanted this campaign, and we gave it to him. We had to take time to organize it, we have done a lot of damage to Dead Terrorists, they even dropped Dreadnoughts on a flycatcher POS and lost one. Did He Say Jump were willing to fight one for one, but Dead Terrorists incessant tactic of bat-phoning Shadow Cartel for every fight meant we had to look for allies too. We lost a fleet or two, but we hit them hard, in particular taking 5 Cadmium moons on Christmas day. They kept losing numbers, and suddenly, Shadow Cartel began appearing.
Let’s not forget that also, at this stage, something key to this war happened. A corporation in Dead Terrorists left them, and joined Fetid, this corp had left Did He Say Jump to join Dead Terrorists, but one of their alliance leaders apparently stole 10Billion ISK from their wormhole, starting a time bomb. They flipped over 10 moons to DHSJ, several to themselves, and another dozen to other factions in the area. This instantaneously cut DT’s moons by 60%. Not only were they losing fights, but they had lost a lot of moons too. Shadow Cartel, succumbing to pressure from the Imperium in the north, obviously wanted to move down here to re-establish themselves as a powerhouse and help their allies. We have SRP, they have SRP, we can fight them forever, and that’s what we’re going to do.
Dracos Rhaghar: Recently, things have heated up. Both sides have offensive and defensive timers, and with the DT/SC forces dropping Supers almost daily, would you say that DT are threatened by what DHSJ and the new coalition?
CJ Gallante: They have to be threatened, with the small numbers we have, what we have achieved is amazing. DT have been calling in help from everyone; Snuff, Shadow, and Others. They lost 5 moons on Christmas day, their towers got stolen from them, and their leader was MIA. They are dropping Supers too often.
Captain Gordon: They aren’t even dropping their Supers to win fights, they are dropping them unsupported, or not to kill anything, they only drop them as a show of power. They previously dropped 8 Supers on 4 Dreadnoughts. They drop them for ganks, and one day soon, they’ll find themselves on the other side.
CJ Gallante The way they drop them shows they are afraid to lose them, we wont judge them for that, but we can be ready to fight them with even numbers, and they wont fight us. The other day, I sat down for 3 hours and developed a strategy about how to beat them: we were going to hit multiple objectives at multiple times. We formed a fleet to take the objective, ready to fight, we were even numbers with our batphone, we went to fight them, took the grid and won the fight. We had 2 other timers to make, and our bat phone abandoned us. We go to the second objective, and we have to take 2/3 of the moons we reinforce, or its pointless reinforcing 3 of them. We decide to light more fires on their ass and dropped our Dreads, but someone forgot a Mobile Cyno Inhibitor, and so we lost a Dread. They are prepared, experienced, and outnumbered. We don’t just have to fight for what we took, we have to fight for what we owned previously. This is a war in which one side will burn, it’s us or them, and we will hurt them till we win.
Dracos Rhaghar: With the north generating a lot of content with the Imperium trying to establish Viceroyalties in the area, it would appear you guys are creating your own.
Captain Gordon: It’s the best content in the universe. We have PL and the Imperium wanting to fight, its crazy. Minmatar and Amarr faction warfare has been split by this war, all sides are calling as many factions into the war as possible, and people are bringing fleets 16 jumps to help either side. You are getting content you cannot find elsewhere.
CJ Gallante: The difference is we don’t promise our friends things to fight with us, and not deliver. We call ourselves the ‘Good Guys Coalition’ because that’s who we are. Dead Terrorists promised their allies moons to help fight us, and they haven’t given their allies those moons. At some point, critical mass will be reached, and one side will lose. This will be a trillion ISK war, and we’re already at 300billion lost between both sides. This war has just started, and that spider web of diplomacy keeps expanding.
Captain Gordon: This coalition has only been formed because of the way Dead Terrorists has treated us. We are the good guys, and we will not lie to our allies.
CJ Gallante: We formed this coalition to take down these dicks. They couldn’t fight us alone, and we find it ridiculous, because they complain that we bat-phone after Shadow Cartel deployed to the area.
Captain Gordon: You should never reveal your whole hand until you are going to win. The small guys in Metropolis fight to win, but we won’t crush them. We enjoy good fights, and don’t blob. In regular warfare, we want our pilots to be skilled pilots, and not win on numbers alone. I’d like to mention that there are plenty of people we can’t thank for their work for the coalition, but thanks for keeping the war going, and I direct that to our allies, and enemies.
Since staging this interview, rumours have begun to circulate that Shadow Cartel’s deployment to the area has turned into a full-scale move operation, and that means the war is about to reach a whole new level and will keep going until one faction sees its assets burned. With everything to fight for, Metropolis is sure to have plenty of content.
