One night in Egmar

"Today Is A Good Day For Someone Else To Die!"

-- (Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay)

I spent the evening roaming the Minmatar Faction Warfare zone looking for the ever illusive 1v1s that I'm convinced the revived Rifter is capable of dominating.

The area was buzzing with activity, numerous small and large gangs all over the place, Amamake hot as hell and Santo "Pod Reaper" Trafficante lurking.

My recent experience with the Rifter has shown me it's a lot better than it was, but is limited to singular engagements but damn it I'm going out there and going to find my Nirvana.

So it was that with one or two random warps to various faction warfare plexes I tripped over two Cheetahs, very unlucky for them that I would exit warp right on top of them and disable their cloaking systems.
Killing cloakers is almost as satisfying as killing warp core stabbers.

After one such kill I warped back to the wreck to loot the cloak, when a Firetail frigate warps in, piloted by the skillful and dangerous Lhorenzho.

A quick look at the Firetail shows me it has artillery fit, with its superior speed this was going to be an interesting fight, it quickly starts to close range as I align out, my afterburner at full throttle, he closes.

50km

40km

30km

My afterburner cycle is about to finish, I overload and pull off a maneuver I haven't done in a while, not since the days of the static 2/10 in Gusandall.
With bits of metal straining all around me, the forces exerted by the Crazy Ivan do almost as much damage to my Rifter as any weapon system, I'm launched in a direct collision course with the Firetail.

20km

10km

Scram and web kick in, the added range my guns now had wouldn't help me in this fight so I had to get close and mitigate some of the incoming damage, weapons systems overloaded I go to work on Lhorenzho's Firetail, his damage is impressive and so is his tank, it's neck and neck, both our repair systems fighting to repair the chunks of armour being torn out of our ships, he's still significantly faster than me and starts to get range where his artillery starts hitting me harder.

With my repper out of nanite paste his armour crumbles, my own is close to evaporating under the massive volleys of his artillery.

I try to orbit, minimising the impact of his salvos, using the greater tracking of my guns to finish him off.
I'm rewarded with a satisfying explosion as Lhorenzho's Firetail illuminates the Egmar system

A great fight and one I thoroughly enjoyed.

I seem to be having an issue with my modules burning out, cost me a Police Comet kill with him at 3% structure, but the pilot was gracious enough to offer a 1v1 against my Rifter, we did so at a deep safe and this time I managed not to melt everything and win. Another good fight.

Also just lost my Astro, took on a Hyperion in an anomoly... Neuted, tackled and dead :(