Snuffed Out hasn’t had a great time of it recently. After betraying Shadow Cartel in April, they’ve been at the sharp end of retribution, and this was their biggest loss yet.
In the early hours of May 23rd 2016, Escalating Entropy had a medium POS coming out of reinforced mode in Asakai which had been previously attacked by Snuffed Out. Escalating Entropy formed a Machariel fleet with Triage and Dreads alongside Shadow Cartel with Psychotic Tendencies. in support. Whilst waiting for Snuffed Out to show they began repairing the tower with bait Force Auxiliaries hoping they would come to the field. However, when they did enter system they docked, as they had apparently scouted Psychotic Tendencies. by this point.
With Snuffed Out seeming to pull out of the fight Escalating Entropy returned home. On the way back the Escalating Entropy Fleet Commander, PunchBug2142, was contacted by Gremk, the main US TZ Fleet Commander for Shadow Cartel. Gremk informed PunchBug of his intention to reinforce a Snuffed Out R64 in Deven with the hope of another round. Therefore PunchBug had his fleet head home but remain formed up to see what their scouts could find.
Psychotic Tendencies. began moving their fleet of Supercapitals towards home and out of range of Snuffed Out. This apparently stirred Snuffed Out into action as they formed their own fleet and logged on super capitals to clear their tower of Shadow Cartel Dreads. As Escalating Entropy noticed the Snuffed Out Supercapitals login a call for more HICs, Dreads and FAX’s was issued. Fortunately for Shadow Cartel and Escalating Entropy, at this point Snuffed Out cyno’d onto the Deven gate in Nagamanen with a few of the Snuffed Out Supercapitals apparently bumping and opting to warp off and then back in. Escalating Entropy bridged as a Hel jumped through the gate which they quickly followed. Unfortunately, it had managed to get out, but the Aeons who had bumped were not so lucky and were tackled before they could escape.
Escalating Entropy had initially began to focus on an Aeon but as it was clearly not dropping fast enough the decision was made to clear some of the hostile Dreads and FAX’s on field. At this point Shadow Cartel brought their remaining fleet to the field as Snuffed Out also went all in to save their super capitals. Snuffed Out lost a Hel and two Nyxs, along with a large amount of dreads and triage, prior to Psychotic Tendencies bringing their full force to bear allowing the field to be cleared quite rapidly.
On this post from Failheap Challenge the Snuffed Out head diplomat Capitol One explains their side of events which appear to correspond with those described by Punchbug above.
In the end, both sides sustained heavy losses with the fight equating to around 500 billion ISK lost with Snuff losing the majority at approximately 360 billion of that. Some of their super capitals did in fact manage to escape the field preventing the loss from being even greater.
This battle was the second large fight in the last few weeks where Snuffed Out has been at the receiving end of massive losses. Though this time they have lost a substantial portion of their Super fleet and it will be interesting to see how they recover.
Full battle report can be found here
Thanks to Punchbug for providing the majority of the information above.
