And they say WH mining is dead

The other day we were just during our normal thing; creeping around null and harassing the residents there. We were near a Bovril mining hub in Catch and were trying very hard to get a fight out of BRAVE by molesting their miners, who all seemed to be bait-fit. Eventually we succeeded in this endeavor and were engaged on a gate by a much larger BRAVE gang. Unable to fight toe-to-toe, we did our best to peel off trigger-happy pilots from the main group and take them down one by one. We were successful at this and blew up a lot of cheap atrons and such, with the most expensive ship we caught probably being a ferox. They continued to escalate until we could no longer feasibly remain on grid, and so we departed. Inexplicably, one of their barges immediately resumed mining in the same system, and we briefly returned to asplode him.

As we were returning home, we got a call from a scout in a different area in the pipe, in a wormhole system. Yes, contrary to popular belief, pvp does still happen in w-space. This intrepid scout had discovered a mining op at an ore anomaly, which do not need to be scanned down as of a few years ago. Any random asshole entering a w-system can warp to any ore anomaly without dropping probes. If it sounds foolish to mine in w-space because of this, that's because it is (unless you are bait). And these miners were out in force. Not just one or two barges, but three - and with a majestic orca on grid, no less.

We took a few minutes to prepare our gang properly and get into position while the scout sorted out a warp-in for us. We had to be extremely careful - derping our warp-in might spook the timid creatures before we were able to bubble them. As were preparing, the scout reported, "Oh no...the orca is warping off." You could hear the crushing disappointment in his voice and my heart sank. "Keep hope alive," I thought, close to tears. Another pilot piped up that perhaps the orca was simply full of ore and would return after emptying his hangars. Sure enough, he did just that, and a few minutes later was back on grid, happily semi-afk while his mostly-afk barges collected more internet space rocks.

With the miners all conveniently grouped up for us, and the warp-in ready, we jumped into the system and warped to the scout, feverish with anticipation. It's not every day you get to kill an orca, especially in a wormhole, although to be fair I had been lucky enough to help asplode one just a few days earlier. Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the four ships moved at all, even though we were on dscan for several seconds while we warped in. The orca would not have been able to escape, as our inties would arrive on grid before he could align, but the barges had a chance to escape if they were dscanning. They were not. We bubbled up and nailed the barges and then the orca. No rigs, and just one mining link, and t1 at that. For all of you who have been sad that ore anom changes killed w-space mining - there is still hope!