Remember when I pretended to kill you with the fire, and you were like, "No way!"

I am not sure how I have been a minmatar all this time and yet never spent more than a few moments in a Rifter. This ship is what some would consider the crown achievement of the minmatar. It's sturdy, fast, and dishes out a lot of damage, but it also carries with it a bit of mysterious karma. It wins when it shouldn't. Something about the rifter is special, in a magical way.

Looking back, It makes me wonder why I moved on to cruisers and assault frigates so quickly. I did hop into the rifter early in my Eve career. I used it to rat angels in Molden Heath. It was in Gonheim, where I was ratting in my Rifter, that Dz first recruited me into Blue Sun Trust, the very first player run alliance I joined. Mere days later I moved on to Stabbers and Ruptures, and then quickly into Hurricanes. 

I remember my first day in a rifter was also the first day I ventured into low sec. I don't quite remember the system, but I remember just jumping in and warping to the belts to start ratting. 

As I was ratting, in a horrible fit that had multiple small shield extenders, another Rifter came in. I warped out to safety. As I warped, I thought to myself, "Hey, I'm in a Rifter, he's in a Rifter, I might be able to take him!"

I went back.

Without going into too much detail, I was  utterly destroyed. 

The very next day, I bought a new rifter, and went on my merry way, back into the belts. Where I foolishly ignored local and my scanner. I was picked off easily by two Interceptors. That was my second loss in eve, and it was followed by my third loss, my pod.

That was the last PvP I saw in a rifter until long after I had moved on to cruisers. The next time I flew one was only because I found it in one of my hangars while I was clearing my inventory in preparation to move to Null sec. With another pretty horrible fit, I went out to see what I could find. I came across a crow pretty quickly. I lost hilariously badly, and didn't step into another rifter until I joined GoonSwarm and even then, it was only for a comedy frigate free-for-all in 77s.

Thinking back, maybe it was because I had terrible fits that lead to my lack of Rifter shenanigans. I always lost hilariously badly when I flew them, so I never felt safe, nor effective in them. 

Faction warfare has brought T1 frigates back into the fray. Many of the complexes don't allow bigger than T1 frigates and destroyers, and since a lot of the time, the only targets available are running these plexes, it's necessary to fly said frigates. So a couple of weeks ago I fit out a couple destroyers, and a Rifter to have on hand when needed.

Last night none of my corp-mates were around, so I decided to swap my Vagabond for a Rifter and go for a spin. I made the rounds through Devoid and the Bleak lands, but nothing was out. There were some Amarr running the plexes in Sifilar when I passed them in my Vaga earlier, but they must have moved on. I took a break for a while and came back to make the rounds again before it was time for bed.

There was a War Target in system. I undocked and took a peek on scan. Punisher. Great target for a rifter. I half-jokingly typed, "1v1?" into local. He jumped out, so I figured he just ignored me, and I continued on my way. I got a conversation invite a few moments later from the guy asking if I was still interested. 

I said "sure."

I figured I was about to get jumped, but I was looking for a fight, and losing a rifter isn't a big deal. I told him I'd go back to where I saw him before and warp to Lamaa III. Much to my delight he arrived in his punisher, alone. 

I opened fire, and the slug fest began. It wasn't a very tactical fight, no one tried any fancy maneuvers, so It came down to who could take the most damage before exploding. He was fit for damage repair. So it was fun, and nerve wracking to see his armor go down, and then pop back up again. 

I was fit for hit points. I had fit a thick plate on there and hoped that it would take longer for him to break my armor than it would for me to overcome his repair amount. I was successful in breaking his tank, and he exploded while I was still comfortably in armor. 

It was pretty cool to see the Rifter's superiority in hot frigate on frigate action. I started chatting with him, asking him how old his character was, and so on. We discussed tactics and fittings. He seemed like a decent guy. Eventually he asked if he could have another go at it. He had another fit he wanted to try, one specifically to take on Rifters. I was more than happy to accept the re-match. 

Same bat system, same bat planet. 

He had fit what looked to be a similar set up to me, except with lasers. The problem is, my projectiles do quite a bit more damage than his lasers, so in a straight up slugfest, the odds are against him.

I tried to get a bit fancy and overheat my guns, to make a more convincing victory. But I messed up and actually turned my guns off twice before I managed to hit the overheat button properly. Which probably mitigated the extra damage I got from overheating. It didn't end up making a difference, as I won again. Late in the fight, two friendly Ruptures came to the planet. Both me and the Punisher pilot instructed them to stay out of it. Thankfully they did, and the fight remained a dual.

Neither time did he ever sniff my structure, which made me feel pretty confident that in future battles, against more skilled foes, the Rifter would hold up well. 

It was refreshing to have a casual fight, but also disappointing as it didn't carry the harsh, nailbiting excitement you get from non-consensual PvP. I wonder if this is what WoW PvP is like. No real loss, no real pressure...

Graveyard:

Punisher A

Punsiher B

I don't want to nitpick Tom, but is this really your plan?

Being that it's the holiday season, we don't have a lot of time to log in to eve, so there isn't a lot of PvP. So far the only PvP I've been in is when I spot a war target in the system I happen to be docked at, while I play Gears of War or whatever.

Back to eve though.

I spotted a war target in Lamaa when I logged in to change skills the other night. I undocked ran a scan, and warped to the Tzvi gate, where I assumed he was, considering he wasn't on scan, and the Tzvi gate is one of very few celestial objects not on scan from the station.

I came out of warp on top of a Crusader. I figured I'd just shoot at him. That kind of locked me into a few different out comes. The one I was hoping for is that he would be silly and think he could kite me while I 3 shotted him out of the sky. The one that happened was that he engaged me first and signaled his buddies to jump in once I was tackled. 

This could have gone very wrong. But since he had to stay within my Range to keep me pointed, and didn't have ECM support, I was able to pull myself away from the gate while his buddies De-cloaked and tried to lock me. 

Which in turn, enabled me to kill off the interceptor and warp to safety. I might have stayed around to see what else I could pick off, but they had a Sentinel there. A Sentinel is the Amarr electronic attack frigate that gets a bonus to neutralizer range. I checked his speed and it was just over mine, so I was concerned he'd catch me, kill my cap and, as a result, my MWD. If that happened, their heavy ships could make me their bitch. 

Looking back, I was pretty far out of range of their cruisers, and might have been able to pop the Sentinel before his buddies could get on top of me. But Eve is a game of quick decision, and I don't yet have the confidence to engage under those odds, as a slight slip up or bad break could mean fast death.

It all worked out in the end. I got myself another solo kill, evaded a greater force, and was no worse for wear.

The only disappointment was that my drones didn't make it. The Crusader popped one of them, and the rest didn't make it back to my Vagabond before I went to warp. 

RIP Warrior-buddies!

Graveyard:

Crusader

Thunderdome

Nothing exciting to report today. None of my corp-mates were around. I was alone, in Lamaa. Well, not entirely alone.... There was a single war target.

Two ships enter, one ship leaves!

I waited outside to see if he'd undock in something he'll fight in. My Vagabond was poised and ready. He came out in a Vengeance. Assault ship vs heavy assault ship. I started shooting him, and much to my enjoyment, he shot back! 

Normally it would be cake for me, but since I was right on the undock, he was able to get a warp scrambler on me. Warp scramblers turn Micro-Warp Drives off. Since I was unable to dictate range without my MWD, he stayed in close to kill my tracking. I did have my drones on him, and while it took a long time, he went down.

Locked his pod, and Scrambled him. I was debating whether or not to kill him. It is Christmas after all. Couldn't help myself. Splat.

I guess it's Dz's influence, but I was a bit paranoid when he engaged and I was unable to engage my MWD. One jump out of their staging system meant that reinforcements might be on the way. But, it was also Dz's influence to stick to it anyway. It all worked out.

Merry Christmas!

Graveyard:

Vengeance

Pod

I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it's all in the reflexes.

Another night, more blood for the blood god. 

Last night we left off in Kamela, so that's where we began. It was chock full of Amarr war targets. Most of them were docked, but we didn't want to get caught in a situation where we'd be outnumbered heavily, and since we were docked as well, it would certainly be easy for them to pile on. 

Dz got us a warp out off grid, we undocked, and off we went. 

There were reports of Amarr frigate gangs 8-to-12 strong near Asghed, so we decided to head that direction. We were still in the same ships from last night, Hurricane, Rupture and Stiletto. Catching the Amarr might be tough, as only Dz in his 'ceptor would have a fast enough lock to catch the average frigate. But you take what you're given on nights where targets are limited.

Two jumps out of Asghed, a war target appeared in Arzad, we waited on the Tararan jump gate, hoping he'd come to us. He did, in a Punisher. Dz jumped in, and we hung back to try and make sure he only had one choice, jumping into Tararan. It worked and we jumped in behind and waited for Dz to get him tackled. It didn't take long for us to destroy him, and Dz, quick on the lock managed to catch his escape pod as well. 

While this was going on, the Amarr in Asghed must have finished what they were doing, because they began to jump into our system. About 8 of them, all in frigates, began appearing on scan. Being that they were in T1 frigates, we wondered if they might swarm Dz. Obviously, somewhat suicidal, but we'd likely not be able to kill all of them before they got Dz, and they are in T1 ships, so any losses would be minimal. 

So Dz hung back off the gate, hoping they'd agress. They didn't and jumped immediately through. The delay for Dz to get back to gate and jump after them meant we'd miss catching one as they ran. It was a decision that yielded more kills if successful, so we can't be upset withourselves.

We pressed on to Ashed and ran the circuit, where we almost fell victim to a bait Pilgrim. If it wasn't for a neutral Zealot scaring him off, we'd likely have died to the Pirate gang two jumps out, waiting for us in heavy ships. We should have recognized the trap, as we've fell victim to the same tactic before, and knowing we were only a couple jumps out from their home system, should have tipped us off. 

Luckily, they don't venture far out of their home, so getting away wasn't too hard. Intel that the frigate gang from earlier moved up towards Dal appeared in militia channel. We  headed up that way hoping for a second chance. One of the Minmatar militia got caught by them on the Auga gate in Dal, so that slowed them up a bit, and gave us time to catch up. We arrived in system right as he died, but it meant that they were agressed, and not in jump range.

Dz warped ahead of us to catch what he could. This time they decided to try and swarm Dz like we hoped last time. We warped in and managed to catch a few as they tried to flee. We only caught two, but managed to pod one of them, so it wasn't too bad. 

At this point Dz began to pick up people looking for gang in fleet channel. Intel showed that they remnants of their fleet were heading to Hofjalgund. We followed them, using Dz's speed to catch and hold what he could while the heavier ships caught up. 

This worked, however, at Dz's expense. He caught up to them and tackled one, but it was after a long warp, so it took us a while to catch up, and Dz died before we could get locks on them. We only managed to catch one of them before they fled. 

Without the nimble tackler, it would be unlikely for us to catch them, so we headed back. We wanted to go to Kamela and see what war targets would be available to shoot, but pirate gangs were moving around in heavy ships, right where we wanted to be, and our gang was too light to contend. 

With that we called it a night. 

6 kills, 4 ships, 2 pods.

Graveyard:

Punisher

Pod

Punisher

Punisher

Pod

Merlin

Good & Evil in the Garden of (new)Eden.

The night started out much like every other night. Dzadhuk and I decided to go out looking for targets in Amarr low sec. Dzadhuk had logged off in the Amarr militia's unofficial low sec staging system, Kamela. He was still in his Pilgrim, an Amarr recon ship. I decided to change to my Rupture, a standard cruiser. There were reports of Amarr going in and out of faction complexes, and those rarely allow above cruiser class vessels, so I was hoping to get a fight by conforming to plex-able ships. 

An hour in and no targets had made themselves vulnerable. There were some small amarr gangs rolling around, but a large minmatar fleet was scaring them back to station. We decided to call it off for a couple hours and come back later when things have settled down, and the Amarr get brave again. 

This time, we decided to go full plex hunter-style. Kelemeth, another pilot of our little corporation, Dzadhuk, and I all fit out smaller ships. Kel and I were in Thrashers and Dz was flying an Interceptor. We had gotten intel that there was a group of amarr running the complexes in Oyonata in frigates. Perfect targets.

Once we had arrived one jump out of Oyo, we let Dz head in to scout. He had found there was pirates in the system as well, which put us off a bit, but we weren't ready to go home just yet. Dz scanned down a Coercer at a belt. It appeared to be a pirate, so Dz tackled it, and signaled us to come into the system. We jumped in and warped to him, to find that the pirates had ambushed us. They swarmed us in the belt. There was some confusion while calling primaries, and we killed nothing as we went down in flames. 

Dz made it out. An Interceptor is a bit more agile than a destroyer and managed to get to safety. Kel and I were not so lucky. 

Kind of a let down, as we were really out to get the Amarr, not the pirates. Again, we weren't ready to call it a night. Dz stayed in Oyonata to keep an eye on the targets while Kel and I burned back to our staging point to grab new ships. Kel hopped in a Rupture, and I decided to bring the heavy support; my Hurricane.  

We were concerned the pirates, or the Amarr targets would flee before we made it, so Kel and I hurried back to Oyonata.  We managed to make it before they left system. Dz got us a warp in on the Amarr militia pilots, who were sitting outside of a complex. As we warped to Dz, the pirates came out of warp on top of the Amarr, and they started to slug it out. Our arrival would make it a three way free-for-all of death.  Three ways are the best ways.

When we arrived, people started fleeing, know one knew who was going to shoot who, so we just tried to catch as many pilots as we could. We were thinking Arbi's. We caught and arbitrator first, which was engaging a pirate destroyer. The arbitrator melted. Next we caught a Coercer who had warped in late to the battle. With all the confusion, he had no support, so he died quickly as well. Then we managed to catch a rifter, who was orbiting me faster than my guns could track. I put the neutralizers on him to kill his cap, and thus his micro-warp drive. This enabled kel to catch him and put a web on him. 

He didn't last long, and we had our revenge. 

We stuck around system, as the remaining Amarr had not left. After a few failed attempts to catch them, we continued on our normal route through Amarr space.

Amarr seemed to be running again, so we headed back towards Kamela, where they usually run to. When we arrived at Sosala, one jump out of Kamela, there was a strange incident.

Dz had jumped in ahead of us, and warped to the Ice belt in system. It's a common place for the local pirates to ambush, and Dz was trying to set up an ambush for the ambushers. A Prophecy was there. It engaged Dz and we jumped in and warped to him. As we came out of warp I fired up my engines and orbited the Prophecy as my sensors were locking on the target. Right when we came out of warp, some war targets jumped in system, it looked like an ambush, but Dz said to forge-on, so I opened up my guns on the prophecy and then-

Right then, Out of game, I heard a thud, then I heard Sara, my girlfriend, start to whimper, sounded like she was crying, I yelled over coms that I had to go for a minute, and just dropped my head set and rushed to see if Sara was alright. 

She had slipped and fell down the stairs. It was night time here in Michigan, and the stair well was dark. She didn't see that one of my cats, Pumpkin III, was lying on one of the steps. She stepped on my cat, luckily just sliding off her fur mostly, and she slipped and fell, very very hard. 

She was taking an old mug of hot chocolate down the stairs, and it spilled. When I got there, I saw dark spatters all over the wall. I was freaking out because it looked like blood. I was frantically checking her over looking for the wound. She was in a lot of pain, so she wasn't saying much. After a few moments, she took a deep breath and told me it was hot chocolate, not blood. I asked her if she felt like she broke something. She didn't think so. After she managed to calm for a moment, she explain that she fell and hit her tail bone on the edge of a step. 

She had a hard time getting up, but she was able to do so. I helped her up and she went to the powder-room to get herself collected. She was OK, but was having a hard time moving. Going up stairs was very hard for her, but we got her up and sat down on a pillow. I brought her some Motrin and water, to hopefully take the edge off. She said she was alright, and she didn't feel sick, which is a good sign, as that usually means something is broken. We got her settled in front of the X-Box360 and playing fall-out to, hopefully, take her mind off the pain. 

I returned to Eve. I expected to find my ship blown up, and pod destroyed. However, that's not what happened. I was still in space, still in my Hurricane. I got on coms, and asked what happened. As I was AFK for the whole battle. Dz and Kel explained that we killed him, and not only killed him, but killed him horribly. I checked my Combat log discover that I received the kill mail! 

AFK Kill? Fuck. Yea. 

I can't believe it. What a weird chain of events. Turned out well. Girlfriend was ok, the cat was ok, my hurricane was ok, and the prophecy was dead.

We continued on into Kamela, to see if there was any war targets about. We docked here so that we could pass the loot from the prophecy. We decided this would be a good place to call it an evening. So when we log in, we can get a chance to gank amarr leaving their staging station. 

I didn't dock right away, since I didn't scoop the loot. As I was sitting outside, hoping for an Amarr pilot foolish enough to take a shot at me. An Amarr militia harbinger, came out of warp near me. 

I locked him, and started to approach him. I expected him to dock, I asked Dz if I should engage anyway. Dz had no idea where I was. He wasn't sure if I was still at the Jump gate to sosala, or if I was on station, but he said "go for it." The Harbinger actually opened up on me first. But only seconds before I did. The harbinger and I were slugging it out while Dz and Kel were trying to get to me. I was winning with ease. Dz and Kel were to be icing on the cake. But then, suddenly, my lock broke. My guns shut off, and I was unable to attack. I said over coms that I had been jammed and Kel, quickly looked at the model of drones the harbinger was packing. ECM Drones!? Damn! What was to be an easy fight turned into a desperate fight for survival. Unable to attack, the harbinger was breaking my tank. 

I got my lock back. But It looked like I was going down. I wasn't ready to try and run, though. My thought was to do as much damage as I could, so that when I died, Kel had a chance at not only surviving, but to finish off the harbinger.  I was just entering structure, but I managed to kill off all but a quarter of his armor. I knew it wasn't enough. With an Amor rep, he might have been able to out tank Kel's rupture when I went down. So I started over heating all my modules. I was down to half structure, but I managed to kill of his remaining armor. It was a desperate slug fest. My neuts were killing my cap, but I didn't need it any more. I just needed it to kill his. 

Down to a quarter structure. He was at 50% structure... I was at 20%... and Holding!? My neuts must have have killed his cap enough to shut down some of his guns. He was going down, and I was going down slowly. My  ship was on fire, all my modules were blinking red as we tore through his hull, and with only 18% structure left, the harbinger exploded into a delightful fireworks show.

It was an incredible fight. Full marks to my corp mates who held the warp disruptor on him when I was jammed.

This was one of the best fights I have ever been in. Fighting tooth an nail. It ties the first fight I had ever been in really. The first fight was, not surprisingly, was also with Dz and Kel. I had just joined their corp, and we went out in two ruptures while Kel was in a kestral. We engaged a pair of cruisers, one thorax, one vexor. I died, but the battle came down to Dz in a rupture vs a pilot named Travis Wells in a thorax. It ended in a similar fashion with Dz overheating his modules in a fantastic effort which ended in us winning the fight. Close fights are the best. If you're not on fire when the battle is over, than you're not living right.

Back to present times.

I docked up to repair, and we had a great laugh. We were about ready to call it a night when a Amarr target undocked from the station. I undocked behind it. Another harbinger, different pilot.

Dz and Kel were outside, and I figured once he saw three enemies, he would just dock; but he didn't. He agressed me! He should know that a hurricane is usually more than capable in a 1 v 1 battle, let alone with cruiser and interceptor support. 

He died a horrible and silly death that he didn't need to. Full marks for bringin' it, though.

We docked up, happy with our outing. Feeling we avenged our thrasher's death in bizarre, but satisfying night. 

We ended the night with 9 kills:

Arbitrator

Coercer

Rifter

Prophecy (AFK Kill!)

Coercer

Pod

Harbinger

Harbinger

Pod

Fleet of Great Victory

Dzadhuk answered a plea for action in Militia channel the other night. Most of the other fleet commanders were off doing other things, and Dz had wanted to lead fleets more often, so here was his opportunity.

At first it was more of a gang then a fleet. Dz and I in Vagabonds, and a few other minor ships. We made our way to Kamela, a system frequented by the Amarr Militia. We scouted the station, which had about 10 or so Amarr pilots outside of it. I believe we only had about 5 pilots in our group, so we were nervous about engaging. We decided it would be better to wait for a less dangeorus opportunity.

Then we got lucky. The war targets split themselves up. A couple pilots docked, and a few others chased a Minmatar pilot out of system. Which is where we pounced on them as they came back in. Split apart, the Amarr gang was easy pickins. Two interceptors fell quickly to the two vagabonds. Aligning our ships into open space to break their auto-orbit allowed us to get better tracking. The vagabonds did all the heavy lifting, melting the remaining two cruisers with ease. It appeared as if no other amarr were coming, so we decided to clean up and start moving.

But much to our delight we managed to catch a blackbird, who had set up with a drake at that very gate, likely looking to gank solo Minmatar. Blackbird Down. Podded.

After this we managed to get a much larger fleet together. We had something to the tune of 17 pilots at one point. It is unfortunate that most of the amarr got wise and docked up. So targets were scarce. We did manage to pick off a pirate arbitrator who was passing through, though.

All in all, it was a successful night. No losses. 7 kills including pods.

Would x up again.

Ode to Dex

Last night, after fitting ourselves out with shiny new ships, we decided to take a tour of Amarr low security space. It was Devoid of targets for the most part, and the outlook was bleak(lands).

We came across some Amarr Militia pilots trying to capture a complex in Lamaa. Since there wasn't much else to do, we decided to stick around for a while and see if we could get some action.

Other than a Crusader nipping around, trying to play games with us, there wasn't much happening. Eventually, Meridius Dex, an amarr pilot, jumped into the system. Meridius and the Force of Tribal Liberation have some history...

Gunship Diplomacy is a corporation employed by the Amarr navy. It's a militant group, prefering mostly pod pilot to pod pilot combat; as opposed to the mass navy combat. Meridius Dex joined them about two or three weeks ago. We met once before when Dz and I took out his Pilgrim in Labapi, but this was before any real repore. It wasn't until November 28th that marked a series of hilarious victories for our little corp over Meridius.

It was late in the evening and I decided to sit outside of a station in Amarr low security space. I had managed to catch a pirate destroyer, and blackbird cruiser, but these ships were easy prey for my Hurricane. Then Meridius Dex jumped in. I remembered that he was a Pilgrim pilot, a recon ship designed to sabotage a ships capacitor. Since those ships can remained cloaked, I decided I'd warp to the complex in the system. I thought he wouldn't engage, but I decided the best place in system for me to engage him was on the complex gate.

For whatever reason, the gate to complexes pull you out of warp right on top of it, and since cloaking systems don't work under 2km from objects, I figured it would be perfect if he warped here, as he would be uncloaked by the gate and I would be able to catch him before he cloaked again.

Much to my surprise, he did just that. At first I was nervous. As a Hurricane, I didn't need cap to fire, and it was likely I'd be able to do enough damage to kill him before he killed me, but knowing that he was engaging me anyway made me think he had friends waiting to jump me. I immediately got my warp disruptor on him, and began opening fire. Since Pilgrims focus on capacitor sapping, I had to be careful. If I ran out of cap, I'd lose him. I turned off my cap sucking modules and prayed I'd kill him before I lost power to my disruptor. 

I emerged victorius with very little damage. It puzzles me as to why he didn't try and run, but I'll take the kill. None of his friends jumped in, so I was chillin' like a villian.

This is significant because people often remember solo battles. Which is why next time I saw Meridius Dex in space, I offered him a 1v1 Challenge. At first he didn't accept, as many of us Minmatar were in the system. But as he fled, me and my buddy decided to use a pincer technique to see if we could catch him on the run. Dz followed him from system to system, while I was set to head him off at the pass. It worked perfectly.

Meridius and I were there to have another 1v1. This time, he had rigged his pilgrim to soak up more damage. So he was a bit harder to kill. He had tracking disruptors on me. Which made hitting his nimble recon a bit complicated, It took some clever jinking of the ship on my part to do damage. He was going down, and I was on my way to victory, but my capacitor was nearly empty, on account of his neutralizers, so my systems were shutting down. 

If the warp disruptor shut down, I'd lose him. I mentioned to dz over coms that I was losing my point, and he made the decisions to engage, he decloaked and put his warp disruptor on him. A few short seconds later, it was over. Meridius lay defeated again. 

He probably wouldn't have engaged me had he known Dz would interfere, but What fun is battle if no one dies?

Pleased with ourselves at killing two Recon Class ships in Two days, we decided to move on, and look for other targets, when that very same night we saw meridius dex, again. This time in something heavier, a Sacrilege. This ship is known for dishing out a lot of damage, while soaking up even more.

A Feared ship to any solo wanderer. Even My Hurricane and Dz's Pilgrim would have trouble taking him out. I could only assume he was out looking for revenge on us. 

Dz grew weary of flight, and decided to retire for the evening, but I was ready for more action. I joined a small group of Militia who were out looking to stomp amarr faces. It was with them that we were able to catch Meridies for the 3rd time in two days. We sent in a cruiser as bait, and Meridius took it, and went for him, then we all jumped on top of him, and destroyed his rigged Heavy Assault Ship. 

I think we got to him this time, as he didn't even try to warp his escape pod out, so we killed his pod, and like the other 2 kills, I did the most damage, making my name the one he sees at the top of the list.

So when we saw meridius dex in system, we were excited to see what would unfold. 

Turns out he was in a Coercer, and that was something that hadn't a snowballs chance against us, so we assumed he'd just leave. I taunted him a bit in local, just to be an ass, and he responded in kind. He then jumped out.

However, moments later he returned, this time in a Harbinger. THere were two other amarr in system, both in small ships, me and Dz were in Vagabonds.

The Harbinger is the same class as my hurricane, so I wonder if he was trying to One up me, destroying our Vagabonds to show he was more badass than I, however, IT was us who got the last laugh, again, when his small ships couldn't do much damage to us, and his Harbinger could not track our nimble cruisers. So with nary a scratch on our shields we sent Meridius Packing again. 

I was tickled pink about these engagements, as we came away victorious over and over again. 

I respect meridius in the end, for always bringing it, not running, not giving up, and not docking in fear the moment a Matari pilot enters local.

I tip my hat to you Dex, hope to pod you again sometime.