Point!

Finally, after numerous requests from corpmates, I have decided to start my own blog to chronicle my existence within Eve Online. 

I was debating on how to start this blog off and came up with two ways to proceed.

1) Start off with a long winded introduction post explaining who I am, what I do and what I hope you will come away with by reading my blog.

or

2) Start off with an action packed post, describing a recent engagement I have participated in.

In the end, I decided to combine the two, and (hopefully) get the best of both worlds. So, without further ado

Introduction:

Hi, I am Suleiman Shouaa. I am a member of the Tuskers, an all-pirate corporation based in Hevrice, near Aeschee and Old Man Star. 

We have several prominent neighbors living nearby who have a strong presence, examples being Devious Decorum, Advocated Destruction/Invicta as well as the Roughneck/Hellfleet "super alliance" which means interesting fights are typically only a few jumps away.

Therefore, this blog will contain the more interesting fights we get into, as well as fitting tips & tricks, with examples of ships I fly with advantages and disadvantages stated. 

Now with that over and done with, time for the action!

Action Report:

Tuskers prefer small gang PvP, and by small gang PvP I do not mean 7-10 Battleships with 3-6 Support tagging along. By small gang PvP I mean a gang of no more than 7 (though even that is pushing it) engaging with a gang of roughly equal size or equal "strength", taking into account the effects of EWar. So it is appropriate for my first post that it will feature small gang PvP where unlike most blog reports, we are the underdogs.

As with most fights in Eve, this tale starts with a single fight escalating to a larger engagement. In this case, an Advocated Destruction Jaguar was killed and was found to be faction-fit after it claimed the life of a fleeted Rifter on his trial account. Gleefully, my companions looted the wreck and moved to a safe spot along with the loot which was easily enough to cover the cost of the Rifter and still leave a sizable amount left for an appropriate loot split. At the time they thought it was all over, they certainly do not think so now!

As the fight occurred in Melmaniel, next door to Murethand (home of Advocated Destruction) the Jaguar pilot was able to re-ship quickly to a Curse, and rally some of his companions for revenge!

At this time, yours truly logged on and proceeded to make his way over to Melmaniel. Thanks to our handy scouts, we were able to see the enemy force as they jumped into Melmaniel. The lineup was:

Their gang: Curse, Falcon, Harbinger and Muninn

Our gang: Blackbird, Cyclone, Jaguar, Rifter (trial account, reshipped), Rupture and Wolf.

As reports trickled in with their composition, several pilots in the Tusker fleet decided that engaging them was suicide: they out gunned us (Roughly 1500DPS vs 1200DPS), had superior Electronic Warfare Measures (Falcon + Curse > Blackbird) as well as superior tanks (Our Cyclone was active tanked, therefore would have been an easy kill with the Curse on the field). As we Tuskers are a poor bunch of pirates (it is rare to see a Tech 2 Cruiser in our fleets, and to my knowledge we have never used a Command Ship in any fleet), we are not able to throw away ships like other corporations that rely on revenue generated from care-bear activities. 

However, I was having a great day so far ISK-wise (ransomed a Megathron for 200M, split two ways and then immediately afterwards running a 4/10 complex whilst trying to kill the Tengu running it which dropped 250M worth of faction again split two ways with the same pilot) so was willing to risk my Jaguar and therefore by extension everyone else's ships. I took over Fleet Command, and prepared the fleet for battle by instructing them to drop the faction loot that they had got earlier safely into a station and then fully repairing any heat damage.

At this point, the Muninn of the enemy fleet was baiting in a belt, with their Curse and Harbinger sitting on the Murethand stargate. The Falcon was undoubtedly cloaked somewhere.This left us with one target: the Muninn. The reasons being:

1) If we went for the Curse and Harbinger, we would be taking gate gun fire. Without any logistics of our own, our frigates would fall in rapid succession (gate guns have marvelous tracking and do a steady 350 DPS, easily enough to chew through an Jaguar in 30 seconds single handily). At that point, we would have 1 weakly tanked Cruiser (Blackbird), 1 neutted active tanked Cyclone (abysmal tank) and a shield Rupture (even worse than the Cyclone)

2) The engagement would be on the stargate leading to their home system, allowing them easy access to reinforcements.

3) Their Falcon would have the luxury of setting up at its optimal range and we would waste valuable time trying to chase it whilst gate guns would be firing on us.

After quick consideration, I decided to go for their Muninn in the belt near to the Murethand gate. I warped in at 0km, with everyone staying in a safe spot off scan from the belt, aligned to the asteroid belt. The Muninn was 50km off, and burning away towards the Murethand gate (staying aligned). At this point, rather than warping off and trying again I stayed in the belt to try and gather important intelligence, which proved fruitful as I found out that the Muninn was fit with 720mm Howitzer Artillery and would therefore have little to no tank and would not be able to track me if I managed to close range. At the same time, the Muninn hit me for a "barely hit" blow, reducing my shields to 50%.

I promptly warped off before he could fire another volley and spent the next few minutes attempting to land on top of the Muninn, both by warping to range at bookmarks I made or with probed fleet warps, neither of which landed me close enough as the Muninn kept MWDing away, thus making me land outside tackling range (I was fit with AB/Scramble/Web, giving me an effective tackling range of ~12km).

Finally, the Muninn stopped MWDing and I was able to land within 11km of him. Overheating my entire mid rack I called out the word that pirates all over New Eden love to hear, POINT!

With the order given, my fleet warped as one to me. At this point, I had to concentrate on staying alive. Preparing for energy neutralizers, my mouse hovered over the Warp Scrambler button, in order to keep point so that even if I was neutted I could still hold the Muninn down until someone else in my gang landed in order to relieve point. Swapping over to my drone overview, I started firing on the Muninn, hoping to weaken him by the time my gang landed with the serious DPS whilst waiting for the inevitable group of Warrior IIs to emerge. However, to my surprise, they did not. 

At the same time, I was applying serious hurt to the Muninn, with him suffering deep armor damage as both gang lands landed ontop of me, with the Falcon decloaking 50km off. As soon as my gang achieved locks, the Muninn was vaporised. We attempted to catch the Curse, however due to the Falcon's ECM we were unable to put a scrambler on it in time before it nipped off. At this point, under heavy fire and neutralizers, I was forced to warp off in 20% shields, but not before calling the Falcon primary. As I was in warp, the fleet started calling out if they were jammed:

"Rifter jammed"

"Wolf jammed"

"Blackbird jammed"

As I landed in my safe, I called out asking if anyone was ontop of the Falcon. After a few tense seconds, Commoner in the Cyclone called out "Scram on Falcon, warp to Commoner!"

As I entered warp again, I heard over Comms that we had lost our Rifter to the Curse's drones. As I landed, I applied my DPS to the Falcon, who succumbed to our onslaught. Finally, with most of the EWar cleared from the field, it was just time to catch the Curse. Overheating my Afterburner once again, I managed to get a scrambler and web on him for long enough, as our Cyclone burnt into range. Once he was firmly tackled, he went down in a glorious explosion, and then was subsequently podded as the Harbinger, 50km away from the Curse finally warped off, no doubt heading back to Murethand.

As my fleet members celebrated over Ventrilo and exchanged good fights (gf) in local, I took a step back to think about this engagement. We should have lost badly, instead we won an overwhelming victory, destroying nearly 500M and only losing 500,000 ISK in the process.

So why did we win? 

The hour is late, and I will leave it to the reader to answer my question. There are several answers, and all the information you need has been carefully included in this post or has been linked.