How the tides can turn...

One minute your walking along sandy waterlined shores in your barefeet enjoying yourself, the next your being dragged out to sea and sucked under by a rip tide.

Pretty much what happened to us tonight. We took some new to corp and PvP players out into low sec with us to let them get their first taste of piracy. Eager and keen they were to get their first ransom or kill. To rid themselves of the shackles of what others would call carebearing.

The group is quite large, we patrol around many systems for hours until we find a lone Brutix. Shaz and h3xta head into the belt and scramble it so it cant escape. Taking it down to armor. They decide to ransom. But the Brutix's drones are causing a few problems for our Assault Frigate and the decision was made to take the Brutix out.

The Assault Frigate then regains control and says everything is fine, continue the ransom, but its to late, heavy fire is already bearing down on the already damaged Battlecruiser and it goes down. After salvaging the loot we move on. The new players still havnt had their first real action.

Our group grows smaller over time and a few missed attempts on players who saw us coming pass us by. Shaz, our gang leader has to go for a while so iam given control of the gang. We decide to head back to HQ, through low sec, the idea to maybe catch something on the way back. We succeed. We spot a Catalyist Class Destroyer in one of the asteroid belts. We head in. I drop out of warp 15km from the target. I engage scramblers, they are effective and the ship cant escape.

The idea is for me to hold it down while the new guys decide wether to ransom or destroy the target. They engage a second scrambler to make sure its going nowhere. They open fire with missiles and laser fire, the desicion has been made then...destroy.

After a few seconds its all over, the pod warps out, the new guys are happy, at last a kill. Those that didnt engage and open fire head back to HQ, the rest of us stay and warp to a safe spot...so we thought... until the flag wears off. We sit there for about 10mins, chatting about what to do with the loot they managed to get and to post the kill mail on eve-kills.

We are all present and active, no one is away from keyboard, everything is fine, then suddenly, the hunters, become the hunted...

Overview picks up a new ship entering our safe spot, what the? Whos that? Thats not one of ours.....RUN!! WE ARE COMPROMISED!! Out of nowhere, An Armageddon Class Battleship appears. Contraband Inc, a very well known, capable and dangerous pirate organisation appears. We have been Scan Probed. We turn to run, then in a split second, I decide to head toward it to engage. Its 1 battleship and there is 3 of us. Its dropped 23km from us. Close range we can take it surely.

It opens up on our Caracal Cruiser with white multifrequency laser fire. Instantly the shield disintagrates, tearing into its armor. It continues with another barrage, breaching the Caracal into hull structure. Luckily the pilot was already turning toward a warp out point and escaped.

I myself am already turning toward a planet to escape knowing engaging is a bad idea, especialy as its not just 1 Armageddon anymore, now a Megathon Class Battleship has dropped out of warp too. Our Blackbird EW Cruiser gets out and so do I. I head toward a planet as it was the easiest thing to line up to and then toward another safe spot. Just as iam warping out, the 2 Battleships warp in, determined to catch me.

Iam ok, I head toward a safe spot and our Blackbird warps to me. We keep moving around safe spots as to not be caught out by scan probes again. Our Caracal pilot, heavily damaged, manages to limp back to a station safely. I continue warping myself and the Blackbird around until the flag he got for trying to target jam the Armageddon when we decided to engage it wears off.

Eventually we are clear to warp to a station without suffering Sentry fire. We line up and use the onboard ship scanner to check the station. Its clear. We make a break for it and dock. We all survived. Our new pilots got what they wanted and more, they got to experience PvP as a pirate and also the prey of a pirate. Luckily with no losses.

So yea, how the tide can turn in battle. Credit to Contraband Inc for being another fine example of a pirating corporation and catching us unawares and offguard. Luckily we wernt to offguard. Like the phrase goes...What doesnt kill you...