by in
Hard Knocks leader, Braxus Deninard, is interviewed by Spod from TIS with help from Ashy as Ashy’s home is under attack by Braxus and his Alliance.
Part 1: The fight in WH space
Part 2: Braxus Interview and others join in to contact Braxus.
Hard Knocks Perspective:
This is the official AAR for the fight that happened on the night of 08/03/2020 during the hull timers for the main fortizars in TDSIN home, J164430.
THE SETUP
The days before the hull timer we had 2 big fights in which we killed a significant chunk of the hostile capital force, and podded out a lot of the reinforcements they got in thanks to frigate hole shenanigans on the first day of the eviciton. This, toghether with some intel we had, and the fact that most of the people defending were buisy evicting rage, lead us to believe that the chance for a fight on the final timer was very small, so we were all set up for a relaxing final structure bash and the loot pinata that would follow, but about 3h before the timer of the TDSIN staging fortizar, “The Kraken”, a new signature spawned. After quickly scanning it down, we realized it was Q003 Frigate hole to nullsec, Vale of the silent specifically.
This was bad, really bad. we knew tdsin would batphone quite litterally anyone in nullsec that would listen, and the TDSIN eviction went from what basically was a guaranteed victory, to an almost guaranteed defeat almost instantaneously.
We started gathering intel on who exactly was forming, and as the list kept growing from goons, to test, horde, brave newbies, bombers bar, basically the majority of big nullsec alliances where dropping whatever they were doing and pinging their members to form fleets to save TDSIN.
The situation was pretty grim, and especially me and Loro were ready to just give up, and tell people to dock up and stand down, but after a bit of a pep-talk from Seth from Hc and bounty, we decided to look at the situation for what it was, and try and make the best out of it.
THE PLAN
The first thing we realized we had to do, was log in all of our rage alts, to keep init and the wormholers currently in rage from podding out to save TDSIN. Little did they know that all we had left was suitcase caps and sitters, and were under no circumstance ready to give a fight. with this we managed to get our numbers docked in rage up to about 100, and at one point even undocked 70 caps (of which a large chunk was unfit/rolling fit), to force them to keep their forces split. This worked wonders, and the only fleet that left rage, was a Goonswarm jackdaw fleet.
After that, we took a look: what exactly was forming to save them, what did they have, what did we have and who was coming to help us?
On their side:
Burning over from kspace:
-200 man goon jackdaw fleet
-120 ish TEST travelceptors, that would recieve handouts once in TDSIN home (tempests)
-70 man horde kiki fleet
-30 Brave bombers
-Assorted allies pinged togheter by bombers bar, which allowed us to get a neutral character into their fleet and get up to date intel on their comp and numbers
and Already in the hole:
-about 150 dudes, with roughly 30 carriers, 20 dreads, 10 faxes, 40 machs and various support ships
On our side:
Burning over from kspace:
-50 frat harpies
-about 40 dudes in a small snatch fleet from cones
in the wormhole:
-our 100 man Muninn/Tfi fleet (started out in muninns, reshipped into tfis)
-Inner hell with 40 ish 10mn arty lokis
-War and wormhole with 60 tempests
-our 30 ish carriers, couple of dreads and a few fax, which we had to use to pause timers, so we could not really commit to the fight
So as you can tell, it looked pretty grim. we were outnumbered and outshipped, and we were also forced to use our capitals to deal with timers, and having to do the actual fighting without their support. We needed a way to mitigate this advantage from their side, and gain any advantage we could. to this extent, Jimmy came up with a brilliant idea: Use our caps, to bait them into deploying on our fortizar, which was on the same grid as theirs, and then simply deaggroing and docking them up, trading maybe a few carriers for a fight right on top of our fort.
We would also start out the fight with our main fleet in muninns, to quickly and more easily deal with the various hostile frigate fleets, and to mitigate damage against both the hostile capitals and large artillery fleets. us/inher/frat would sit on the nullsec frighole, killing said fleets as they jumped in, and then turn around, and face the main enemy force all togheter, while our carriers took care of all the fortizar kill timers.
This was starting to look like something we could potentially pull off, and the prospect of a fight became more and more exciting.
THE FIGHT
The first timers passed away without shots being fired on either side. them allowing us to grind down an azbel and a fort with our carriers sitting on ours, while waiting for their reinforcements to come in. As the horde/gsf fleets came closer, we undocked in muninns and warped to the null, to await and fight them.
The first hostile fleet to arrive were the test ceptors, that quickly docked up, and got handed mainly Tempests, and a few capitals they still needed pilots for. various other smaller groups had already been trickling in, so the core of their fleet was at that point ready to go.
When the goon jackdaws were almost in the target system, They undocked their battleship/capital fleet from their fortizar, and as expected, warped it straigth on top of our carrier blob, deep inside of our fortizar tether range. The bait had worked, and jimmy quickly deaggressed our carriers, only losing 2 of them in the process. We undocked the few dreads we had, and togheter with the fortizar they started chewing through the hostile fax wall, quickly all dying in the process.
in the meantime, we decided to let inner hell and their 40 lokis + minokawa face the horde of incoming nullseccers togheter with fraternity, and we burned our muninns out of the bubbles and warped onto the main grid. We told the war and wormhole tempests to also commit to the main grid, and start blasting
we started out grinding through their tempests, killing almost every single one that was broadcasted, Me and kappa alternating who was calling and who was anchoring based on which one of us was webbed by hostile bhaalgorns, which we could not clear with the muninn alpha, killing 58 of them and a few machariels in 9 minutes time, while only losing 7 muninns, and a handfull of kiki legion tempests. At this point, the goon jackdaws that had been fighting (and getting slaughtered by) the inner hell lokis on the frighole grid landed on the fortizar, in pds range. I started broadcasting them as fast as I could, not even calling out names, and between the 70 odd high tracking muninns we had and loro manning the fort pds, they lasted about 3 minutes on grid. It was a slaughter.
While all of this was going on, Jimmy was doing god’s work, pinging our carriers between friendly astrahuses, avoiding getting caught (we had no fax to save him, and they had a couple of dreads chasing our carriers around). while grinding through any hostile structures that were vulnerable, basically treating our armor tanked carriers like you would nano supers, and with great success.
After dealing with the hostile jackdaw wing, inner hell managed to land on grid, and started clearing even more tempests, while we were volleying off machariels.
Shortly thereafter, pandemic horde’s kiki fleet landed, surprisingly, also in pds range. Their fate was the same as the jackdaw fleet that preceeded them, all of them getting sent back to their ns staging system within minutes.
due to some bad communication on our side however, the friendly harpy fleet was also in pds range at that time. and unfortunately 50 brave fraternity boys died for the greater good.
At this point of the fight however, we had cleared all the hostile frigate fleets, and we had slowly bled 20 ish muninns, meaning we did not have the critical mass anymore to effectively volley off the well tanked hostile armor battleships, so we made a call to all deaggress and get ready to dock. in what is possibly the fastest mid fight doctrine switch in wormhole history, and in the middle of one of its biggest battles, it took us only 2 minutes from the moment we started deaggressing, to the moment we undocked a FAT tfi fleet.
first things first, with our more then doubled alpha strike, we started clearing the hostile webbing bhaalgorns fist, and then what was left of their armor fleet. Even tho we had killed a lot of the hostile reinforcements by this point, the fight was far from over. The war and wormhole fleet was pretty decimated, and hostiles still had 50 capitals on grid, 40 machariels, and 40 odd tempets. Hostiles we killed before but not podded were also warping in a small sleip/hurricane fleet as reinforcements.
At this point of the fight, jimmy’s carriers got through the last few % hp on the kraken, killing the main target of the entire operation. Cheers erupted on comms for a second, But then we kept on fighting.
20 more minutes of just clearing the subcaps that were left ensued where we were consistently outtrading them really hard, and after that with only the hostile capitals left we completely stabilized, and we slowly grinded through the hostile capital grid, with the help of our fortizar (lmao), being all quite pumped that we had managed to pull this off
REFLECTIONS
I think this was for most people involved the best fight they’d ever participated in hands down. it certainly was for me and for the rest of ops team that was there.
First and foremost, our ops team is fucking amazing, @Kappa Pride @Jimmy Michaels @Phi Feynman @loroseco_krossand @bountyofben_django were incredible here. Jimmy’s plan with the bait carriers, and the way he handled them togheter with phi after that hands down won us the fight, I dont know what I would have done without kappa alternating the calling with me, Both calling and anchoring in these fights is just not doable, especially in muninns, and kappa did an amazing job alternating the calling/anchoring with me. Also loro, who organized the entire logistical part of this with help from BA. without him we wouldnt even have had the tfis to fight with, and did an amazing job manning the fortizar and helping with the general planning of the fight, and bounty for just being all around helpfull. We couldnt have done it without ya, you guys did amazing
Then our allies:
Hawks , Hole Control and the various smaller wh corporations in our fleet, The incredible dedication from their leadership and linemembers to fully support us in this op, their help in planning, and a lot of their skilled members helping out with all aspects of this eviction/fight was critical in making this happen.
Inner Hell, and their russian allies, for being absolute chads. say what you want, but they’re the least risk averse group I know, and they have probably the most skilled fc that I’ve ever had the pleasure to fight with or against. the way they turned flying those 10mn lokis into almost an art is incredible to watch. Their leadership is also a bunch of really cool dudes, always willing to help out, very no bullshit, very nice to work with.
War and Wormhole, for being a bunch of legends, just warping in their 60 tempests with 4 guardians when we asked them to, knowing full well they would probably feed every single one of them, but willing to take down as much as possible with them. Love those guys, mad respect.
and frat/cones & friends, our only kspace batphones that showed up. Cones actually helped secure the loot grid once we got out of the fight, and then helped with mainly looting capitals and stuff while most of our boys went to bed, burned out from this fight, and were really honest about the loot they gave back to us (100b+), and frat were just all around helpfull, and not too angry when we pds’d their entire fleet. sorry guys!
and last but most definitely not least, our own members.
you’re all chads, and to me the fact you trusted us enough to dedicate this much time and effort into this eviciton, stayed up deep into a sunday night to make a last stand when things looked their worst, makes me a little bit emotional. There is no group in all of eve I’d rather be with, and its an honor to fly with you guys. none of this would be possible without you guys.
