Ominous Latin Name

 

So I seem to have wound up joining Shadow Cartel. Yes I know, this has completely come from out of nowhere especially when you take into account two posts ago I was shilling for my own, newly created PvP corp. 

Despite flying around New Eden solo most of the time it's still nice to have folks to chat to and enjoy the social side of Eve. In a one-man corp you don't really get much of that so when an opportunity to join Mea Culpa came up I took it. Since my return to Eve I've got to know most of the locals around Hevrice and I kept bumping into Max, one of the geezers from Mea Culpa and another SC pilot who keeps killing me in his Dragoon. Several ad hoc roams up and down the Black Rise pipe later (do not recommend - you always die when Max is in fleet) and I was basically in! There aren't too many pilots in the corp but I see that as a good thing - when you get to know basically everyone on TS/Discord a much more tight-knit group is formed rather than having randoms from a pool of a couple of hundred turn up for a fleet. 

Shadow Cartel then, eh? I remember back in my days as a Tusker they were the big alliance a couple of doors down from Hevrice who liked to drop carriers on cruisers for a laugh. I'm told they (we?) still do that, which is mighty entertaining. I mean it would be if I regularly flew carriers. I do have a Panther sitting around gathering dust so that will hopefully be useful in the not too distant future.

Speaking of big(ger) ships, there are a bunch of doctrines that SC use, some of which are nice to have and others which are pretty essential to own. Some of them aren't cheap either so I thought I'd try and grow my liquid ISK by doing some carebearing (I hear the cool kids call it krabbing these days), because PvE in Eve is easy right?    

There's no use hiding it so I'll just link it here. I welped a Loki on some random site, probably because I had no idea what I was doing. The first three battleship rats in the plex died easily enough to my HAM sandwich and I was barely taking any damage. Anyway after they exploded a whole bunch of other Mordu rats spawned and some of them webbed and scrammed me, which led to my beloved Loki with a bunch of killmarks on it also exploding. Something something hubris I guess. So yeah, I guess I'll go back to just taking other pilots modules after I've popped them. Might take me a bit longer to afford that Tempest Navy Issue though...

In other news I killed a Garmur today. That piece of information on its own isn't particularly noteworthy because lots of Garmurs are killed every day in Eve. Even the manner of how I killed it isn't really that interesting. On d-scan I saw a newbie in a Hurricane sat at an open FW plex. A few moments later I saw a Garmur on scan at the same plex. Using my incredibly impressive powers of deduction I identified the pilot, checked his recent Garmur fits on zkill - which were all semi-pimped LML kiters - and then fitted up my own Garmur with a scram and rockets.

I warped to the plex and due to Eve's rock-paper-scissors methodology I easily caught and killed the enemy Garmur. The loot fairy was not gracious and did not grant me the Republic Fleet long point but she did give me the B-type MWD which is better than nothing. I offered a gf in local and got one back and then the pilot said something in French which according to Google was slang for being irritated. Moments later my wallet flashed.

"for your skill". Had a good laugh at that. The irony of an LML-kiting Garmur pilot being salty because he got killed by an anti-kite fit Garmur is almost palpable. 

Until next time, fly reckless

- Cable

Going forward with Chasing the Blue Flash

I've been zooming around New Eden again for just under 3 weeks now and in the words of John Wick, I'm thinking I'm back. Despite having forgotten how exhilarating Eve PvP is I'm hooked back into it again. Since being back in lowsec I've clocked up 121 kills and lost 27 ships which isn't bad going. Granted, a bunch of those kills were newbie pilots who inadvertently ventured into lowsec a couple of days into their Eve journey but I need to get myself down to -10 sec status and a kill is a kill right?

All those years ago when I first started this blog I used it to document my journey from being a fledgling capsuleer to a lowsec pirate. It's quite funny looking back at some of the old posts and seeing how I thought I was doing or spotting obvious newbie mistakes that we've all made. Well now that I (sort of) know what I'm doing there's not much more progress to catalogue. At this point you might think that Chasing the Blue Flash has run its course like so many gaming related journals do but I enjoy writing about my time in Eve so I'll be keeping it going.

Posts now will be on a wider breadth of subjects other than "this is what I killed this week". Sure, interesting kills will still feature but I'll be doing spotlights on my favourite lowsec fits, good destinations to roam around lowsec and other topics that will become apparent when I either think of them or steal ideas from other authors. 

To kick things off, I solo'd two Praxis today. Neither were particularly well fit but I didn't know that until I warped in and made them explode. I initially saw them on d-scan whilst warping around Hevrice looking for FW pilots to shoot at. Narrowing them down to an area of space I reshipped into my cloaky Loki and dropped combat probes, hoping that neither pilots would be pinging d-scan and get spooked. I got a full hit on my first scan so instantly brought probes in and warped to their location and jumped through the accel gate.

I landed at 0 on one of the Praxis and the other was a good 40km away. I instantly tackled the one I was bumping hulls with and settled into an easy orbit, slinging missiles its way. I was hugely surprised that the other Praxis stayed on grid and didn't warp off to save his own skin. Even with both battleships engaging me they barely did any damage - I think their drones did most of the work. I think I had to cycle my XLASB maybe twice the entire fight. 

After the first Praxis went down I snagged his pod which didn't have anything exciting in and then tackled the remaining battleship. That one went down pretty quickly too and this one had an Incursus in it's escape bay, which also exploded. 

Shortly after the skirmish both pilots convo'd me. I was expecting the vitriol that normally accompanies such kills but was pleasantly surprised to find both pilots congratulated me on killing them so hats off to both of them for taking it in their stride!

Strigon Team are still on the lookout for lowsec PvPers. If you're interested in joining or want to know me, join the public channel - Strigon Team Public.

Fly reckless,

- Cable

Strigon Team

When I came back to Eve I spent a few days pottering around in Wingspan and ultimately decided that it wasn't what I was looking for. After parting ways I made my own one-man corp with the intent of dodging the NPC tax for being in the State War Academy. I've since decided to attempt to create a small, tight-knit group of lowsec pilots who enjoy PvP in a relaxed and mature environment so am pleased to announce that Strigon Team is open for recruitment!

 What can Strigon Team offer you, the budding lowsec capsuleer?

Well, not a lot at the moment in all honesty as it's very much a grassroots startup. The goal is to get PvPers and pirates alike interested and form a small core group of players who are interested in both solo and small-gang PvP. My vision is for the corp to consist mainly of solo players who have access to a reasonable batphone of local corpmates and have the opportunity to create small ad hoc fleets for roaming around New Eden. More organised small-gang events to follow when numbers permit.  

It's worth noting that I (mostly) play during the UK evening so my main focus to start with will be people who are also EU TZ players. We have no voice comms right now because there's just me but if the corp starts getting members I'll whip up a Discord.

The corp - like me - is based out of Hevrice in Verge Vendor, Gallente lowsec. There are plenty of good roaming routes up to Black Rise, Essence, Sinq Laison and more! Hev is also only 12 or so jumps from Jita for relatively quick shopping trips.  

What do I want from potential members?

The corp only has 3 rules and they're pretty easy to follow:

1. Don't be a dick.
2. Always honour agreed 1v1s and ransoms, when offered.
3. Pilots must be fiscally self-sufficient.

And that's it!

I realise that there's every chance that Strigon Team will remain a one-man corp and no one will be interested but if it does I lose nothing - I'll still be plundering the space lanes either way.

If you're interested in becoming a founding member of Strigon Team then join our public channel, the aptly named Strigon Team Public. 

Fly dangerously o7

- Cable