Tusker's Revenge

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?  In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'  This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.
--Douglas Adams

After my last post on gate camps, I decided to followup with my own tale of failing miserably to get out of one.  With Great Fail Comes Great Responsibility.  I think that's how it goes anyway.

You might recall my harrowing tale of taking on a Tusker's Battlecruiser in my Arbitrator with a Rifter as backup.  To be honest, there was a period of time where my go-to solution for getting into some good PvP when I didn't have a lot of time was to simply roam to Hevrice.  If I didn't encounter anything along the way, I was sure to get a fight out of the Tuskers once I got there.  This had been working so well in fact, that I was making a rather obvious habit of it.

That's probably about the time I should have realized it was too good to last.  On one of my recent trips up there, I had gotten hung up one jump away from the Tusker's home system with a Faction Warfare duo in an Interceptor and Stealth Bomber.  I was particularly interested in the pair because the Hurricane I was flying was extremely well suited for taking on Frigate gangs.

Unfortunately the FW pilots were having nothing of it.  They had safed up the first time I landed in their mission, and were now proceeding to talk smack from a safespot.  Not able to do anything to them there, I asked in the Tusker's Public channel if any of them could lend a Probing hand next door, but recieved no reply.

After several minutes of the FW pilots assuring me that it was no big deal for them to abandon this mission and that I was only wasting my time, they eventually did abandon it and left the system.  Having nothing else to do, I then made the jump into Hevrice.  Right into the waiting arms of the Tuskers on the gate.

This was particularly bad because the aforementioned Hurricane was not well suited to taking on a duo consisting of another Cane and a Drake.  At this point, I was still pretty calm, however.  I had been spending an awful lot of time running around unscouted in heavily plated ships and had managed to dodge much larger gate camps than this one.  The FNG still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

Decloaking, I immediately hit my MWD back towards the gate.  I took a volley of Heavy Missiles for my trouble from the Drake, but it became clear that the Cane wasn't going to aggress so they'd still be able to put someone on the other side.  I jumped through, followed by the Tusker's Cane, and still kept my calm waiting to play another Ace from my sleeve.

Now sitting again under my cloak, this time staring only at a single Hurricane, I waited patiently for my session timer to expire.  The idea here being to wait about 50 seconds before decloaking and burning back to the gate.  If everything goes to plan, the pilot on this side will announce he has a point just as the the Aggression Timer for the pilot on the other side expires, and he too will jump through.  You then use the time while he's still burning to the gate and his ally is stuck under another Aggression Timer to escape on the other side.  As soon as I saw the gate activation, I immediately jumped back into Hevrice.

I noticed only too late that the pilot's name appearing in local was not that of the earlier Drake pilot.  Sure enough, the Tusker's had been joined by an additional pilot.  This is the point where I really started to get worried.  I was already about 1/4 of the way into my Armor Buffer, now staring at a Drake ready to lock me and certain that the longer I played this game the more time they'd have for more backup to arrive.

Deciding that I wasn't going to let this end like my last death to a camp, where I died without putting up a fight, I threw caution to the wind and attempted to brawl down the Drake.  Hoping he would turn out to not be as heavily tanked as the Drake's reputation would lead one to believe.  Yeah, I was disappointed.

Already missing a substantial amount of my ship's EHP and in a fitting not particularly suited for fighting another Battlecruiser, I didn't stand much of a chance.  I never managed to pierce the Drake's shield.  Before the third Tusker jumped into the fight and was revealed to be flying a Jaguar.  I wish I had seen him sooner, as my Dual Webs would have likely made short work of his ship, but alas, it was not to be.

I'm forced to recall something Kil2 said in one of his PvP videos.  He likes to have multiple victory conditions for his fights so he can always feel like he won.  Did you hold the field?  Did you kill more isk than you lost?  Did you kill more ships than you lost?  Did you kill a ship larger than anything in your gang?  Did you make some brilliant tactical maneuver?  Did you at least learn something from the fight?  Congratulations, you won!  It may sound like you're just lying to yourself, but I can guarantee it's the only way you're going to keep your sanity out there.  So how did I win this fight?  I denied the Cane getting on the killmail by leaving him de-aggroing on the other side of the gate.  Go me.

Regarrrds,

FNG