The Battle for Haras/RvB Ganked 118 BR

It's been two and a half weeks since Haras, but who cares. Better late than never. RvB Ganked 118 was described, innocently enough, as the rare two-part public roam: the first segment would be the fleet's entry into the Battle of Haras, and the second segment would be an arranged fight with militia forces at a plex.

This is what happens to PL's rival
fleets during big events

The Battle of Haras had been announced over a month prior, when some Russian incursionists posted on the EVE-O forums that they would sacrifice an Aeon in low and there would be prizes. Ganked FC Mangala decided to take RvB over there - all 200 of us with armor BCs and cruisers (and one guy in a Drake, no joke). We knew that Pandemic Legion would be there and steal the show, but we figured we could still get in fights, even if the Aeon was a foregone conclusion. I took a sacrilege as I had just fitted one and wanted to test it out.

The Reds weren't ready right on the dot so we dithered around in low while they got their shit together. Some of us lemming'd a gate and we nailed a blackbird waiting on the other side (see, all you exasperated FCs - sometimes lemminging is good). Once the Reds announced the event system in their channel, Haras, we burned over as quick as we could, and apparently so did the rest of EVE. Roleplaying reporter Jandice Ymladris blogged a decent report on the battle itself, which was a complete shitshow (although I disagree that RvB was on grid for any significant length of time). PL, goons, winmatar, Eve-Uni, Spectres, Gorgons, and a bunch of other gangs arrived and started bashing the shit out of each other. I'll just talk about the RvB fleet's experience.

We landed on grid with the Aeon at the same time as a couple of huge fleets. The system was in deep tidi, because the Russians had apparently derped and failed to submit a fleet fight notification. Those requests are very important, because without them, CCP will not be bothered to reinforce a system's node, and deep into time dilation you go. With our range shit, and the situation on grid quickly deteriorating, Mangala took us away from the Aeon and to the system's only stargate. That was perfectly fine with me, as fights with other gangs sounded much more fun than slowly drilling through a supercap's armor. It was at the gate that we found our first fight, with Spectre's shield cruiser gang. While it was a big fleet for Spectre, it could not stand up to RvB's blob. We blasted through their logi in just a few minutes and then started to chew up their dps, which consisted mainly of moas and shield thoraxes. A separate omen gang got caught in the fray as well but bailed after we dropped a half-dozen of them, including a pretty Kador edition. At least, I think the omens weren't Spectre. Everything gets so confusing when the FC is calling primaries and I'm trying not to die while also whoring as much as I can. We stayed on the gate for a good 15 minutes, which is a relatively long time for EVE pvp (tidi wasn't helping any). We knocked out some frigs, like a tackly hawk and dirty opportunistic bomber, along with a couple of expensive stragglers, like a Gorgon zealot and random naga, before we moved on.

Chasing after stragglers

After Haras we started harassing the remnants of the Aeon event gangs all over lowsec. We caught four Russian nagas and one of their logi pilots in Tannakan. We continued pursuing them into Kamela, where we brought down another half-dozen nagas and some of their nice t2 cruiser support, like a huginn, basi, and lachesis. Content for now, Mangala ordered us to reship for the militia brawl he had arranged.

Nearly an hour later, we arrived in Huola and squared off against the Minnie militia at a plex, away from stargates and their pesky guns. The militia was horribly outmatched, but they had brought with them huge balls of brass and fought us anyways. To their credit, they continued fighting even after we demolished dozens of their moas, ruptures, and stabbers. Their pilots even reshipped after they got popped and returned to the fray. Big thumbs up to the Minnie militia for their cajones.

After all the carnage we still had 100+ pilots in fleet, so again Mangala rallied us and we headed into Catch for glorious death. We almost immediately ran into yet another naga gang, this one led by none other than newly-minted CSM rep and notorious proviblob FC corebloodbrothers. I think core was either forming up to fight someone else or had just gotten his ass kicked by someone else, as he was ill-prepared for RvB. We took down a few of his nagas, including his own (my first CSM kill do I get a cookie?), before his fleet retreated. After that we kind of got split up by some bubbles and other terrible shit and Mang called the fleet, although we did catch a nice vagabond and some random frigs.

My sacrilege burned heroically at the highsec gate in HED-GP as I valiantly tried to take down a Northern Coalition cyno rapier. I had derped my weapons timer and sat dumbly on the gate, in a huge bubble, as the NC fleet cyno'd in and popped me. I was so close to the weapons timer expiring that my pod got out, at least. But that's ok. After all was said and done, we had gotten into two big fights and countless minor skirmishes and I had whored on 80 killmails. I hadn't gotten on the Aeon mail (I doubt anyone in RvB had), but my mighty sac had done its duty.