The crisp, clean air . . . that I'm not breathing

     I never really felt I was in any kind of danger from the crew that war dec'd us, because they hung out mostly in Jita and Amarr, didn't seem to like low sec, and didn't really go too far astray from their stomping grounds or stations.  Mostly stations.  Still, it was always necessary to keep local pulled out and peel an eye in that direction, just to be on the safe side.  A number of far less attentive indy-types paid for their ambivalence with trips to the store to buy new boats.  Once the war dec was lifted, I could breath easy and go about my daily business of Incursions, missions, Incursions and mining.  Plus, I got to get back to Incursions :)  Once the dec lifted, it felt a little easier to breathe.  I was reminded of Neo.  It wasn't really that big of a deal, but I guess keeping an eye on Dscan and local is a way of life for WHS, low and null sec denizens.  I'm not really interested in that style of play yet, obviously.

     As the war timed out, I moved my main to where I had my shiny new Bhaalgorn, undocked, and headed about a dozen jumps to the Incursion system.  I had it double webbed with faction pulse, and hoped that would get some decently fast invites.  Instead of getting a completely new set of hardware, I took some of the gear from my sniper AF Apoc.  I had a short and long range set of guns for the Apoc so I took 4 of the pulses for the Bhaalgorn, and 4 of the beams - just in case.  The Bhaalgorn doesn't have the long range snap of the Apoc, but it's easier than trying to drag both ships around.  I quickly got in a VG fleet, and we proceeded to start clearing sites.  It certainly wasn't at the much whined about pace of 100 million/hr like the anti-high sec Incursion whiners like to carp about, but it was still up in the 70 million range.  The Bhaalgorn is a great boat to fly in incursions, and a lot of fun.  Lots more cap to start with, plus being able to cap transfer with any other boat, means I never had to worry about cap at all.  Being able to lay 2 faction webs on a rat really made them pop fast too.  It all went rather well even though I was a little rusty on Incursions after a week, especially if I wanted to stay on top of dropping the webs when the rats got in range.  The up-side is that I got Minmitar BS trained to 4 during the war, so I had a 25km range on the webs.  Got in a few good fleets over the couple days, and made some healthy isk to help offset buying 2 PLEX in the psycho PLEX market of late.



MOM fleet forming up.



     Monday, the merry pre-patch day, I had some extra time to run incursions and got an invite to a VG fleet after the first fit was dropped in chat.  Hooked up with a great fleet with a couple Bhaalgorns, some Vindis and some great SEBO and links, and we shredded a lot of sites.  About an hour in, the SF fleet popped the MOM site, so we moved our wagons about 27 jumps to the AF fleet's Incursion, and carried on there.  Good FC, fleet stayed pretty strong, and then later on in the evening, my time, talk started up about running the MOM site before patch day.  I guess the idea is to pop the Incursion before patch because a new one will spawn after, plus, apparently some players worry that the patch might screw up the current Incursions.  Not sure if there is a precedence for that, but what the hell, I'm in for a MOM site.  Form-up took about 35 minutes and we ended up going in with about 15 boats short, and a few ALTs to help boost the isk income for the ship replacement fund.  With the reduced DPS, the site was taking longer than before, but that was to be expected.  problem with that was that the longer it takes, the more bomber spawns we have to deal with, and the more chances you have for the bombers to notice you and decide to send some torpedo love your way.  As luck would have it, I was one such lucky individual, and the drill was that anyone less than 150K EHP should warp out if primaried by all the bombers.  I only have about 120K, so when I was primaried, I announced it in broadcast and Eve voice, and warped to the sun while the logis repped my ass off and the rest of the fleet started melting the bombers.  I made it out and came right back, but man, those bombers can really lay the smack down, but never got me into structure - very close with the crazy see-sawing armour indicator, but the logis kept me up.  Maybe if I had stuck around I would have been smoke.  Don't know.  Two or three others had to warp out too.  In the end, I got back in plenty of time, popped the Kundalini, saw the loot drop, and started hopping my BS back towards Amarr.  The Bhaalgorn is a very nice, and flexible boat to fly.  I have a large collection of mods that I carry around with me, in order to change the fits based on what is needed, but I think I'll see about a way to bundle up the Apoc and have a sniper and a DPS boat for armor fleets.  I'm also toying with the idea of putting 1400s on the Apoc.  Would certainly solve any cap issues.  Will have to see what EFit says.

The Point?  I'm happy that I now can do, actual better things to do, than play station games.