A pirate's roam for me (aka the best fight ever)

I generally don't pvp in lowsec because I love my sec status. Well, I mean I'm not in love with it, but I also don't like being blasted like a criminal whenever I enter highsec. I know, such carebear snobbery. I am ashamed of myself.

BUT I found a link to the Tuskers' public roam forums somewhere and, being very pubfleety lately, decided to give it a go. I had only heard of the Tuskers in passing, but they are apparently a rather successful lowsec pirating group with a taste for solo and small-gang pvp, led by super pirate captain Suleiman Shouaa. The particular roam that I signed up for was a Sacrilege gang. I guess sacs (and guardian logi) are the ship du jour of lowsec? My sac skills aren't bad, but I decided to go with a Celestis instead because who doesn't like to be dick ewar.

Just like this

It took us about a half hour to find a gang who would settle in and fight us, but boy was it a fight. Probably the best fight I've had in EVE to date, solely because it was so evenly matched. Much of their gang was Drunk 'n' Disorderly, but there were some other randoms mixed in - maybe they're all blue to each other; I have no idea about lowsec politics. We met up with them in Vitrauze and stared each other down dramatically while the entire galaxy of New Eden watched us. And by the entire galaxy, I mean a few people in local who trolled us and tried to loot wrecks.

We had around 20 or so with logi, and they had 20 or so with logi. I think they had some logi...pretty sure I was damping the shit out of Guardians the whole time. They were definitely not in sacs though. It was a kitchen sink armor fleet with negligible ECM support. The first to go down was an ishtar, which was a great primary because sentry range. After that we torched an ashimmu who was carrying a couple of nice faction mods. And when I say "we," of course I mean the sacrileges and not me, heavens no.

During the initial volleys of the fight, as our HACs moved into position with their brawling cruisers, our logibros and EWAR were busy trying to avoid dying horribly in a fire while simultaneously providing support and getting into the perfect position to continue providing support while not dying horribly in a fire. It can get a bit confusing, especially as all the ships on grid are jockeying around for the best position. Suleiman did a good job with range control and kept the opposing brawlers focused on our brawlers, which left us free to keep the gang alive and prevent enemy logi from keeping their own gang alive, which is how we managed to trash nearly all of their fleet (except the logi, ironically).

Our celestis anchor (can't remember who you were, but probably either Sara Lucheni or Nicolai Kapersky) was a total boss and coordinated damps so well that enemy logi was completely out of the fight. Once that happened, and a pesky Falcon was taken down, their dps ships began popping. There was a Navy Vexor and a deimos and a vigilant and some fleet stabbers and more crap, all within minutes. Sadly, at this point we lost one of our Celestes and started to slow down, but most of their dps was already gone. We dunked their remaining ewar, which consisted of an arazu, sentinel, blackbird, and arbitrator (poor arby tried so hard to rep). The remnants of their fleet disbanded. I had been called primary once, but was able to get out and back in very quickly, although I did derp my first warp and had to reposition so as to not be 110k from friendly logi. I think both of our other celestes got smoked and had to reship.

Once that fleet was gone, we focused on the wild thanny that had appeared at some point during the battle. I'm still not quite sure what he was doing there, or even when he'd cynoed in. He did have capital remote reps and a triage module, so perhaps he was there for logi, not that it did his fleet much good. We were not able to break the thanny tank, but serindipitously three supercarriers cynoed in and tipped the thanny over the edge. Also, my first time on grid with supers. We left very quickly after the thanny was down and Suleiman called the fleet after a half hour of no action, but in a dastardly act of cannibalism we did catch one random Sacrilege on the way home.

Everything about the fight was awesome. Evenly matched, both sides FC'd well (ours probably a bit better than theirs), our dps followed primary and overheated when they were supposed to, and logi/support didn't fuck up too badly. We were even rewarded with a cap killmail and my sec status wasn't completely derped. It doesn't get much better than that for EVE small gang pvp.