After being a secondary theorycrafter in Deliverance. for my first two years of AT I had some mixed feelings. Somehow I was good enough to call targets in scrims when the main shot-caller was not there, but not good enough to reliably get a ship in a match when he was - a somehow understandable choice, since having two many Ideas at once can cause issues too. So I decided it was time to forge my own path. My goals were to show that I had learned everything I could from Deliverance. and would now do good in practice and not just in theory, so I was looking for a new team.
While I was add it I decided to use my time to modify Pyfa to get it to work headless, allowing me to get stats for a lot of ships quickly. Eventually I decided to join Ragequit as they seemed to be decent in sharing the required responsibilities on grid and I could hopefully find a place in the team and learn from Damassys Kadesh (a well known theorycrafter and pilot).
Scrims Volume 1
Unfortunately we had a somewhat rocky start, with key roles clicking modules or loosing grid awareness, armor ships in shield comps (figuratively and literally) and Damassys, as the glue that held the previous team together, seldomly there. For some time I was doubtful it was going to work out. But nevertheless we continued on. I took over the role of shot-calling, thought people how to 4/5-link and how transformers work, how I would classify comps, how to set video recordings. Feeders were knocking at the door and we had to ask ourselves what we could fly reliably enough to win.
Feeders
Match 1: Sedition.
For our first game, we didn’t really know what our enemies would bring and decided to run Shield Octo. We were confident it would beat a Rush with the high DPS, and against Armor Octo we had the Initiative with our better stats but worse resists and mitigation.
We ended up going against a Rush, which ended up surprisingly close - We did not spread our ships fast enough at the start and fed a Vulture for free, but ended up getting the win by the enemy running out of catch and our low-end living.
Match 2: Trimuvirate.
For our second game I was absent in a bunker on a mountain. The internet was just about good enough that the Teamspeak would not die (no chance to watch a discord stream) so I was sitting out. After the match going on for a few minutes a friend showed up with a LAN cable and I could watch our Tripple Battleships Comp stolen from Onlyfleets clean up the last Sleipnir who was still tackled by a Punisher that had scrammed him as soon as the countdown hit zero. We had previously learned that just Bhaalgorn Webs were not enough to reliably keep rushing ships at a distance when the Bhaalgorn got caught. We were through without a hitch!
Scrims Volume 2
After feeders we went into a short second exploration phase, finding new comps that could work and expanding our pool. For me the highlight was getting the coordination down string out and kill a high DPS comp with control, something I had not really managed before (But we never managed to make it work vs Paper Numbers, they would always find a way to break through and win). Our spreadsheet looked pretty good as well now, the early pyfaing payed off. Here is how it looked with an example comp (not actually one we would use, with two different Mallers so you can see the difference in how it works):
At this point, we were also trying to figure out what Flagship to bring. I favored the Vindicator early on and defended it against all matter of things. Laelaps, Bestla, Armageddon Navy, at the end only the Bhaalgorn was left as a contender and at this time I was confident in the Vindicator and not willing to move much anymore. Meanwhile we won every single match with the Bhaalgorn - however it felt more like our opponent was bad rather than our Bhaalgorn good. So we went with the Vindicator and a clear ban strategy for it: Keep open Frig Logi and beat it with the Vindicator Webs. If they ban frig Logi then the meta changes because you can bring lower application comps and be fine. Eventually we figured out the bans were much more focused on TDs and then there could be no ship that can really hold down the Bhaalgorn forever for your Vindicator to come in - oops.
Tournament
Match 1: Plug n Play
Our first match was against a team heavily focused on 3 Battleship Comps, which is an environment where our Vindicator would solve all problems, so we decided to bring it. We also wanted our future opponents to know that we actually have a Vindicator and think about it, so this was the perfect opportunity to bring it. Our bans weren’t that important for this set itself, so we decided to ban some things so we could telegraph Vindicator again in the next match against Tuskers and then not bring it.
The match turned out to be a bit hairier than expected, with the Ashimmu stalling us for a bit and not being a good enough target to bring Frig Logi in for. So we had to switch target to a beefy battleship half way through, forcing the hand of the Frig Logi and ultimately trading their Logi for one of our Battleships. We then slowly stabilized and killed all the remaining threats for our Thalias (the Ashimmu and Draugur) and finally traded out Battleships.
Match 2: Tuskers
Now for the second match against Tuskers. We knew that we were outclassed heavily in this, so rather than going with a Mirror-Matchup we tried our best to be in something Asymmetric. One thing we figured out was that if you reliably call the ships that come screen your rush as the next target they would die and you could continue rushing. But if you ever didn’t stop for a ship this would no longer work. We also thought that having 90% EM resist into a Bhaalgorn could be efficient in an endgame. So we gambled on Tuskers bringing a Flag Bhaalgorn with support.
Turns out they didn’t bring the Flag and we lost. This was an acceptable gamble for us, although I also failed to call targets as per theory explained above, and we gave them a bad run for their money. Honestly I wasn’t sure if it would have worked if they brought what we wanted either.
Match 3: No Need Loose Face
Our third match was against one of our scrim partners which we had good history with winning against. So this time it was our duty to fly standard and theirs to bring something wacky. We opted to bring a HAM rush as they simply didn’t seem to have any comp that would reliably beat it.
They opted for pseudo-tinker setup with really good application. As soon as we hit the grid and I saw the Raven Navy and T2 Frig Logi I was very confident we would win. You see a good tinker splits the ships into two sets. One that is completely expendable and the other one is tanked for nuclear war. But with bringing T2 Frig Logi there was not enough points to bring a really tanky high-end and have tanky links. So instead of expendable and not expendable ships, there is a whole variety of in-betweens, and crucially these in-betweens are what gives the top end it’s tank (frig Logi, links). So we could just start killing weak ships and in the process make the tankier ships also weaker, until the entire comp unravels. We ram them and clear screen to make sure everyone gets on target then unravel them as discussed.
Match 4: Genshin Impact Alliance
Our forth match was against Genshin Impact Alliance, a team that so far didn’t loose a single ship in their tournament. Their control heavy play-style focused heavily around their Armageddon Navy Issue Flagship. We found some ban set and came up with the comp they would bring with it, and knew we could just break it with our own 2BS, not shackled by RHML reloads. Alternatively we were also confident enough in our setup being able to string out any 3BS or Rush they could bring.
They brought pretty much exactly their “signature” comp we had envisioned with our bans, minus some low end where we thought they would bring Mauluses, but they just had more tackle and relied on 3 RSBs for their Curse instead. I made my Lunge to get one of the BSs tackled and made sure our BS could do it, all to plan. Then we started making mistakes. First we split our battleships and did not have the DPS in one place to just break them, however we managed to get them together again. Soon after, disaster struck again, with our Hound flying to close and getting killed. At this point I was pretty sure we had lost critical mass to break them, so it was my Confessors turn to put some DPS on their deacons to give us one more chance (I hadn’t factored that DPS in to be safe) and in a last-ditch effort we managed to kill a battleship. All the mistakes cost us time, armor HP and cap boosters, and we would have to survive on the fumes that we had left. This is when our third mistake happened - the enemy curse got screened by us aa bit late and our logi didn’t quite burn far enough from it, so the Oneiros was getting neuted and tanking increasingly difficult. To our luck we had also thought of neuts on the Oneiros and packed two cap injectors, nonetheless we lost our Redeemer with seconds to spare and won - with one point to spare instead.
Match 5: Till Doomsday
Our fifth match was against Damassys old team. They had shown a unique style of comp that could beat the meta Drone or RHML Battleship Comps. Their style of comp, sometimes called a Tarpiting Comp (putting everyone in a tar-pit) is essentially an all-frontline comp with a tanky Logi in the back and little Ewar. I had extensive experience vs this style of comp from the last years of scriming vs Darkside and even tried some similar ones in scrims at some point. What was going for it this year was that there was lower projection (e.g. no Barghests / Shield Kite) making the Logi in the back safer, but at the same time not having unbonused TDs or Damps didn’t really help this comp. This team additionally had a Vindicator Flag which they could bring. We decided to ban TDs and then run Octo with a Hyena and Interdiction Links against them. If they brought the Vindicator we could out-range it forever and kite, if they brought the signature comp we could go around them and if they brought a Rush we had enough tools to make sure our own Zarm lives and some DPS stabilizes in the lategame.
Turns out they brought the first and everything went to plan, with the Hyena clash being decided by our instant Laser DPS. I got to excited with burning around and promptly burned my prop, then called the Zarmazd to sac me to make sure nothing worse happens from it, a deserved lossmail.
Match 6: Evasive Maneuvering
Our next opponent was Evasive Maneuvering (formerly Darkside) with their unique Leshak flagship. We banned out all the fast Logi Cruisers, as we were confident our HAM Rush could run down Octo, stat-check Drones without a Flag Armageddon Navy and MJD on a Guardian in a Control Comp. Something I already forget again while writing this. is that we always tried to have two archetypes that synergize with our bans with an entirely different set of ships, meaning we can not really be affected catastrophically by enemy bans or even have a choice with the new Intel from bans. In this case the Loki ban tipped us off that they would want to Kite, so we quickly scrambled to remake the fastest non-Loki HAM Rush which we had previously discarded because of to low stats (shout-out for Paper Numbers for fielding it in our Scrims in the first place). At this point we are a bit out of our League, so there is a good amount of luck involved in winning.
This time our nose was right and our enemies did not spread early enough (we did the same mistake in feeders) so we were able to run them down. In all fairness, our Raptor managed to spread tackle on two of them right away which really helped.
Match 7: Barcode
For our next match (seventh, who is even counting at this point). We go up against Barcode, a Bhaalgorn Flag team again. We had a total of one Scrim against a Bhaalgorn Flag so far, so we were somewhat out theory at this point. We go with our 90% EM resist setup again and use a version that is a bit catchier (faster ships with webs) than last time, but dropped one of the 90% EM Ships for this (I got asked during the AT why not have Cynabals in this comp but didn’t answer until it is over - loose lips explode ships - the problem is that you get about 50k EHP on them with a web, making them just not tanky enough to catch).
As we load the grid, all warping at 0 (yes, even the Logi), we see that they do bring the Bhaal flag and are excited that we got the read right and nervous that or theory might just not work. We leave the Bhaalgorn alone and shoot the higher DPS per EHP Abaddon first, then swap to Frig Logi as early as possible to start trading well. Then we burn down whatever is close and keeping us of the Bhaalgorn. Initially, we had two ships on different damage types to skew the Reactive Armor Hardeners (a bit lazy, more would be better). A Khizriel, which is now dead, an my Sleipnir, which was screened and TD’d so had to shoot Barrage. Once I realize that because of this we effectively only have one damage type, I reload to EM and the Bhaalgorn dies.
Match 8: Platinum Sensitivity
For our final match, we were up against a Bhaalgorn flag once again. We decide to ban some of the TDs and bring the others. so we can exist at range with a Bhaalgorn. For comps we have a variety of options depending on what TDs are open and do OK into a Bhaalgorn-Octo, be it Vindicator, Drones or just normal Octo if all TDs are banned. We banned some TDs, thinking they would surely ban the others or leave at most one open, but somehow we end up with both the Sentinel and the Crucifier open. We were not sure our Vindi + Widow would be good enough against them and end up picking Frig Logi with Crucifiers on 3BS, making things not more complicated in a comp where we had no practice against anything similar.
The match loads, and sure enough Platinum Sensitivity brought their signature comp. We wait around a bit, with our TDs mitigating any damage, until we can get in on top of their Battleships and start looking for some small stuff to evaporate. But Platinum Sensitivity flies their Sentinels and Deacons really patiently around our Vindicator, sacs the BS when needed, does not get into web range ever and managed to neut out the 2-Inject Thalias to kill our low-end and slowly win the game, well played!
Aftermath
So with some good choices and a lot of luck we ended up fourth. Meanwhile we didn’t even have an Alliance Logo (Debug is still on it as it seems). A very cool run for a team where a good chunk of people where entirely new to AT.
Stats
As with the Tuskers recap here are some stats about the team:
- Team Members: 16
- Total Payout: 13’263’000’000’000 ISK (13.2 trillion ISK)
- Total Accredited Hours spent: 2629
- Tools written or modified for this Tournament: 6
- Total Comps Ready to Field: 61 (Includes closely similar ones)
- Total Scrims against Bhaalgorn flags: 2 (Includes Matches)