So, I am going to try the impossible....to write about being a member of a one corp alliance with about 20 'active' members entering the Alliance tournament. Wow....what to say..... where to start. Being an AT virgin and having the memory of a goldfish, this may be difficult. Don't expect a blow by blow account of the matches, I'll link the Interstellar correspondents page and vids for that. This is just going to be the garbled ramblings of a crap pilot with a bad memory.
The subject had been talked about and the corp had decided to try to get in, we missed out on the initial draw and had to go in via the auction. We had a whip-round and lots of members threw in what they could, my contribution of 500 mill, was obviously a drop in the ocean. One of our corpies who is very space-rich fronted most of the needed isk, a big thanks (I think) to MentalMaverick - space billionaire and top pilot to boot. We scraped in on the second day of auctions for a sizeable chunk of isk.
Then things started to fall apart. Trying to put a finger on what happened and why is impossible without some serious surveys and honesty among the corp. The number of people logging in started to drop, was it pressure, was it just summer months, was it just an unfortunate set of circumstances? who knows. But trying to get practice sessions going or people even to log in became difficult indeed.
I reckon that in total we practiced 4 times, maybe less for the whole thing. The final two weeks of the tournament running up to the finals weekend we didn't practice at all, most members barely logged in and only showed up for the match itself.
I must say a big thanks to the Qcats boys at this stage, especially Ammon Dei for cajoling us into any kind of practice and for providing teams for us to practise against, without you guys we wouldn't have practiced at all, and Ammon's 15 minute rant in our public channel about our pathetic lack of enthusiasm was entirely justified, and hilarious by the way.
So our preparation for the fights usually consisted of throwing ships together with a few minutes to spare before we were ported over to Jovian space for the matches themselves. I can not even begin to describe how stressful sitting on comms listening to people panic and try to get mods, implants and ships together is, wondering whether they would make it in time or be ported across in an unfit ship with the wrong implants etc. It's sickening and stomach churning. But very much the corp style, which is presumably the way we all like it.
Our first match came around all too soon and we were beaten, we brought an anti-ecm drake/harpy/scimi setup that really didn't fare well against the in-your-face bhaalgorn team that Rote Kapelle brought.We took out there logi, but they took out both drakes and a harpy to take the match. We did take points however and stopped them taking the full 50, which was crucial later on. Link to match here
Our second match saw us face Romanian Legion, and we moved over to a heavy dps setup revolving around the now infamous Windicator. They brought Sleipnirs, merlins and logi against our Vindi, logi and vengeance / ishkur team. We exploded all their ships and lost our logistics. A fairly convincing victory, Much happiness and rejoicing followed. Could this band of retarded man-children actually pull it off and get through to the group stages? Indeed it appeared as the Sunday matches unfolded that we had done enough, a total of 77 points from the first 2 matches left us in a respectable 20th place from the 64 teams, and took us through to the group stages. Guaranteeing us a further 3 more matches. Link to match here
I suppose I must say at this point that I didn't participate in either of the first 2 matches due to my general crapness at PvP, there are far better pilots than I in our corp and so obviously they flew in the rounds of 6. I turned up, I helped where I could, but was basically a spectator for the qualifying rounds. I was almost guaranteed to fly in the group stages though, when you only have about 20 active members to choose from and it comes down to things like 'who's got assault frigs 5?' 1 hr before we fight, then I knew I would get a go at some point.
Confession time. The weekend of the group stages I was at a festival (the Rainforest music festival held near the beach north of Kuching in Sarawak, Borneo.....yes that's where I'm lucky enough to live) and staying in a chalet on the beach with my girlfriend and another couple. So the Saturday match came around for me at around 2am on Sunday morning after about 12 hrs of partying that involved.....well lets just say...'a cocktail' of substances. I think I was in a griffin and frankly too removed from normality to actually get too stressed or remember much of it afterwards. We were soundly thumped by Gypsy band who brought a proteus based setup against out sleipnirs and ecm team. We didn't take down a single one of their ships and lost all of ours. I think I died second shortly after our FC. It felt like about 10 seconds into the fight but time does weird things in that arena. Link to match here
I went to bed strangely numb after the match. The next day found me back at home and still slightly other-worldly, this time to find myself in an Ishkur which it came as a bit of a surprise I could actually fly; gallente frig 5 and Assault frigs 5. This time rather than jamming crap, I was expected to tackle stuff and throw my love spuds on the barby, I lasted a little longer this time and we won the fight.which left our group in limbo, all teams winning one and losing one. We were playing Shadow Cartel an alliance I seem to have been rubbing up against ever since I moved to low sec. Link to match here
This time was truly terrifying, having hours of build -up, and being slightly more sober really didn't help with the nerves. The terror when you first getported across to jove space, and then warping to the appropriate beacon and seeing your opponents on the field for the first time. The panic of messing up, moving, hitting the wrong key or something stupid like that and being eliminated before the game begins.
Great elation and cheer on comms post match, a feeling of disbelief that we might actually do this and get through, all we had to do was beat Suddenly Spaceships a group that used to be We Form Voltron,,,, alliance tourney vets. Oh Shit. Thankfully and sadly I was to play no further part in the remaining 2 matches, the best pilots for the ships should definitely be flying them and in neither case was that me, which is for the best....the derp is strong in me.
The following weekend would be the final match of the group stage and then the promise of the Finals day immediately after should we qualify from the group stage. It must be pointed out at this time that our group consisted of us (Percussive Pizza Time Diplomacy), Shadow Cartel, Gypsy Band and Suddenly Spaceships. The latter two expected to go through while us and Shadow dropped out. With 1 win and 1 loss each it was all to play for, points didn't matter any more for the table, if we won we went through.
Saturday came around again (or Sunday morning again for me at around 3am :( ) Our FC had decided that a kiting tengu team was going to be fielded, a lot of us were obviously dubious as Shadow had brought it against us the week before, and we had beaten it, what we had that they didn't was great tengu pilots (apparently) so we would be ok. At this point as they moved down a comms channel for the match, I muted teamspeak and went to watch the match without hearing it on comms, there is a 1 or 2 minute delay between the actual fight and the feed, so I didn't want the team re-entering comms and finding out the result before I'd actually watched it. There was a point in the match, it was about 4 or 5 mins in I think, when the last of their tackle died, a big fucking grin came onto my face and I realised that Jack and the team had been right, they were going to win, and they were right about the fact that the reason they won was because they piloted excellently. Michael Bolton III coined the phrase 'Boss-tier' for the tengus and I assume the piloting of them in that match. One of the commentators later called it the best example of a kiting setup he'd seen in the tournament, and that it had won through top piloting rather than just better ships. When you don't walk away with the big prize you have to take the small victories and cherish them. I was very proud of the retarded man-children that day I can tell you. Link to match here
Onto the finals we go. before going to bed that night, we found out the draws to find that we had been drawn against Darkside, tournament vets and extremely good pilots. Not only that, if by some miracle we won...haha.... we would be facing PL in the next round......bugger.
Needless to say we were curb-stomped. Link to match here
We, basically a 20 man corp, had got to the final 16 of the competition, we had beaten some extremely good teams and got further than many very large alliances with countless resources and pilots to choose from, we had gotten further than anybody else expected us too (and ourselves too tbh). All the forums and match prediction threads had us losing every match.
Some people need to be bigged up at this point: Mentalmaverick obviously for bank-rolling the whole thing almost entirely (and for being one of the excellent tengu pilots). Joe Danger for doing a lot of the theory crafting, flying a lot of the big expensive stuff (windicator), for flying in every match and FCing when MarketJacker wasn't flying. Market for FCing and and theory crafting, BillyBulb for theory crafting and being the only practical person amongst us. The rest of the man-children for generally being greatly retarded and derpish. I love you all.
We can be very proud of ourselves, and we are. It nearly killed the corp, activity (on TQ) has never been so low, the levels of dissatisfaction, bitching and moaning that went on throughout the 3 or 4 weeks was incredible and disheartening. Some very good pilots have left the corp as a result, and they shall be sadly missed. We are hoping that the publicity gained from the ATX will bring a surge in recruitment, which is already proving to be true and we hope that activity picks up again soon. The month before the ATX I had over 100 kills, the month of the ATX I had about 23 and quite a few of those were off-line POS's and POCO take-downs that myself and a few others did in our dreads out of boredom.
Stand out match of ATX was this bodacious bit of theory crafting from Agony Empire, when people saw your fleet, they laughed, we laughed, everyone was a bit like 'wtf is that?' Then we sat dumbfounded and soon started cheering you on, desperate for you to win, you deserved to win, you were so close. My hats off to you fellas...fucking awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wca4_hty9to&list=PLA59A659455B44498&index=15&feature=plpp_video
