In the very near future, the annual Eve Down Under (Australia’s Version of FanFest) will be coming back to all of us.
To get people excited, Pandemic Legion member Techstrategyremake, proudly supported by Eve-Bet, set up an Australian tournament. 16 teams of 3 came together in the system of Pakkonen to partake in this brilliant opportunity to test their skills against fellow players from “Down Under”.
The rules were simple and specifics can be found in the official link here. Noteably though, teams could not use faction mods and were restricted on the ships they could bring by the points system.
All prizes courtesy of EVE Bet
First place team will receive 5 PLEX and one of each pirate battleship.
Second place team will receive 3 PLEX and one of each pirate cruiser.
Third place team will receive 2 PLEX and one of each pirate frigate.
All competitors will receive a 100m ISK EVE Bet credit voucher for each appearance they make on the field.
The author participated in this tournament and we will follow his journey through the 2 Sundays of fights. PunkRAwk was the captain of team “Nothing Sus” which came 2nd overall in the tournament.
Nothing Sus
PunkRAwk – Captain Deadspace Arising / The Drunk and Disorderly
Kasper Skov Nothing Sus
Blossom22 Nothing Sus
Apothica Nothing Sus
The official bracket can be found here
Original setup for the battles were huge. Hours upon hours on the test server with so many combinations of ships and even more counters for them. Our first battle we decided to go all out brawl to try and at least get through to the next round before trying a new fitup. Our plan was simple: burn in and apply as much DPS as quick as we could. For this we decided on twin Vexors and a Blaster Proteus which were all buffer fit.
Fight 1: Nothing Sus VS Scrublords
We all were called to undock and warp to a random pocket in deadspace for the judges to scan our ships, looking for any faction or illegal modules. After being cleared, we warped to the battlefield at our distances. Because we wanted to brawl at close range we all warped to 0. Our first fight looked to be interesting as 2 Cerberus and an Osprey Navy Issue (All long range fighters) warped in almost at the edge of grid. The countdown begun and within moments it was on, We overloaded our Microwarpdrives and burned straight at the enemy ships. Just as tackle was called on our first target we lost a Vexor. Disadvantage to us. With the Cerberus tackled we quickly overloaded our Blasters and managed to burn him down quickly. As the lights flickered on his hull and the inevitable happened our other Vexor exploded. With only the Proteus left on grid to fight two enemies things were looking bad. Overloading everything, the Proteus held the Cerberus and managed to get him to 30% shields. With armor getting to less than 5% it was all but over for Nothing Sus to be knocked out in the first round. With that the timer went. Due to the nature of the “Points” system, the fact that Nothing Sus managed to keep the Proteus alive actually put them in front in points. 2 Vexors worth 6 points compared to 1 Cerberus worth 8. With that, Nothing Sus scraped through to the next round.
Fight 2: Nothing SuS VS Lastminutemen
While recuperating from our close call, we watched our competitors’ fights like hawks and noticed Lastminutemen were quite successful with Twin Vexor Navy Issues and a Broadsword. Expecting them to try this again, we quickly pulled out our “Deathzone” comp which was twin Phantasms and a Scythe. We expected the enemy plan was to use the Broadsword to shut down Microwarpdrives while the Vexor Navy Issues simply kited. Our plan yet again was simple: trick them by burning away, then swing around and burn in with the extreme afterburner bonus on our Phantasms and drop them quickly. We warped to the grid at range to trick them into burning at us. Again, the siren was called and we burned away from the centre of the arena. They gave chase and burned straight at our Phantasms as we waited patiently. As they closed to 40kms we quickly overloaded and turned around. Burning straight into them and hard tackling the first Vexor Navy Issue. It simply crumbled under the pressure. Our logistics was hard tackled but managed to drop EWAR drones and jam out the Broadsword. At this moment Kasper Skov our logistics pilot quickly overloaded his Microwarpdrive and burned out to a safe range again. With the first Vexor down we rolled straight to the second Vexor Navy Issue. Without being able to outrun the Phantasm fleet he too was quickly shredded under the immense fire power of these Pirate Cruisers. The Broadsword was tackled next and slowly was chipped away, until he went *boom*. With a nearly flawless victory, we passed to the finals weekend coming up the following Sunday.
Fight 3: Nothing Sus VS YellowKnights
With things heating up, we went into the 3rd round with our spirits high. We watched Yellowknights in their last fight, and formed what we thought would be the perfect counter to their tactics. Coming into the round, they brought Twin Ishtars and a Vexor Navy Issue. Obviously extremely kitey, these would be tough to hold down. The last round they fought against Twin Harbingers and an Exequror. The Exequror almost insta-popped which worried us severely. We formed our “Domination” fleet which consisted of Twin Vigilants and an Exequror. It was my turn to be the Logistics and I knew they would try to primary the Logistics again. We warped on grid with Vigilants at 0 and Exequror at 50 to try and dictate some range. As soon as the siren rang out, we burned straight in. Sure enough they primaried me in the Exequror with not only sentry drones but also Sensor Dampeners (Reducing my targeting range severely) but luckily I was also kite fit with an active repairer. Going sideways to the Ishtars Sentry Drones the damage was almost halved, enough for me to quickly stabilize and begin to tank. They switched to Kasper Skov in the Vigilant and I was able to hold him quite nicely. Once YellowKnights realised they could not break the Vigilants they switched back to the Exequror and managed to slowly grind through until the ship was destroyed. Almost at the same time, the Vigilants caught one of the enemy Ishtars and pounded through his armor. With the second YellowKnights ship going down, we had one choice: attempt to burn straight for the next target with little cap and low armor, or mitigate some damage while regenerating capacitor. We decided to take out the enemy Ishtars’ Curators to reduce incoming damage. To our surprise, he came within 30kms of us. We wasted no time and overloaded our MWDs straight into him managing to grab webs and hard tackle. He crumbled and we rejoiced as we were through to the grand finals.
Grand Final – Nothing SuS vs Yellowknights (YellowKnights, after we originally defeated them, were sent to a separate “losers’ bracket” where they won all of the rounds and had a shot at the Grand Final against us again)
With tension building on what comp to use, nerves ran hot in Teamspeak. We had the perfect winning fleet: Twin Moas with a Remote Rep Tengu. The purpose was simple. Expect the enemies to only allow 19 points in their fleet with us fielding a full 20 means if we lost nothing we simply won by default. We decided to go out with a bang. Go hard or go home as we say down under. Expecting YellowKnights to bring the fleet comp they won their previous match before the finals of 2x Gilas and a Keres, we made the fatal mistake and for the first time in the Tournament decided to bring the same fleet comp again. Twin Vigilants with an Exequror for logistics. We warped onto the grid and our hearts sank as we saw a Huginn, Celestis and Gila on grid. The enemy plan was simple, The Huginn would web us down while the Celestis damps out the Exequror and the Gila slowly grinds us down. The siren rang and we were off. Microwarpdrives overloaded as we desperately burned to our engagment range. All damage was on the Exequror and I overloaded all the tank I had. Tanking at roughly 10-30% armor, the Exequror seemed to be holding ok. With that I heard a cheer in comms as “WEBS ON HUGINN” was called. With the Vigilants quickly catching the Huginn somehow he managed to slow the inbound Vigilants and burn back out of range. With this, the Exequror was beginning to crumble under the fire power and slowly leaked structure. The Vigilants managed to tackle the Celestis and quickly bulldozed it down. It was a trade off, YellowKnights lost a Celestis to Nothing Sus losing an Exequror. Unfortunately, with that the Huginn was able to hold the Vigilants off while the Gila slowly bulldozed through them. After a few minutes the Vigilants slowly fell one after another and spelled defeat for Nothing Sus. The winning team of YellowKnights took the grand prize while Nothing Sus took second place overall.
All in all, the fights were extremely difficult and all players worked hard. I can say from a personal experience the whole thing was purely enjoyable and more about coming together as a timezone to have good fights and good times.
blakphoenix from Darkness streamed the action live. Below is a recording
Watch live video from on www.twitch.tv
Nothing SuS fight 3 is at 35 Minutes in and the Grand final at 2Hours 16 Minutes.
I caught up with one of the organisers for a chat.
PunkRAwk: Hey mate thanks for such a great time! Anything to say to the pilots who participated?
Techstrategyremake: I just wanted to give a huge thanks to everyone who participated. Everyone had fun, Great fights happened. The memories will last with all of us. From the victories to the crushing defeats. We all had a blast. I would also like to thank Eve-Bet for making this all happen and also Bam Stroker for all his legwork.
To the victors:
mirae assett
Liquidbear
Tikktokk Tokkzikk
A huge congratulations on behalf of all who participated and we look forward to the next one.
PunkRAwk is a member of Deadspace Arising, The Drunk and Disorderly
