Alliance Tournament Dream Teams

I’m about to let you in on a closely guarded secret that you may not have known: humor and sarcasm play a GIGANTIC role in this blog. As I’ve been known to say, Eve is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. Humor, laughter, and jokes are also fun, so it is with that in mind that I make a habit of making them cornerstones in my writing here. Of course, now you have to swear you won’t tell anyone; internet spaceships are serious business you know…

After watching the parade of horrible fittings, piloting, warp-in, and target calling that were the preliminary matches in Alliance Tournament X (not to say they weren’t fun to watch but honestly people?) I thought to myself, “well hell, I could come up with some better teams that that! Thus, after a couple drinks (“creative juice”, if you will) the following “Dream Team” Alliance Tournament teams were brought into creation. You might want to take notes:

Team Popular:

This is the “in” crowd of AT teams; the cool kids, the trendies, the flavors of the month. This exceptionally low skillpoint team takes their ques on how and what to fly in Eve from newly released ships, forum buzz, and covers of EON Magazine. What they lack in actual know-how and competence though, they make up for in mimicked opinions, regurgitated statistical discussions, and linked killmails they had no part in. Somehow overcoming in-squabbling and differentiating opinions, Team Popular rolls up to the first day of school with the following new duds:

2x Tornado (24pts)

1x Oracle (12pts)

1x Naga (12pts)

1x Talos (12pts)

3x Dramiel (12pts)

1x Vindicator (20pts)

2x Enyo (8 pts)

Total: 100pts

As much fun as I want to make of this team, they actually don’t turn out half bad. Riding the FOTM wave of the still frosty Tier 3 BCs, and the slightly snipped-but-still-Air-Jordan-cool Dramiels, along with that fresh out of the box smelling new Gallente buff, Team Popular arrives on the scene looking dapper as Sinatra. And with fairly impressive DPS on field backing them up, this team, with some lucky warp-in ranges, manages to alpha 2 of the opposing team’s ubiquitous Merlins and half the shields off their Scimitar before enemy tackle gets a hold of a few of those tier 3 glass cannons. Like a bad highschool horror movie, the cool varsity jocks and cheerleaders in the BCs on Team Popular get nailed in the back in pretty quick succession, effectively gelding the DPS for the whole team.

Without the damage output giving them the offensive edge, Team Popular crumbles. While the Drams and Enyos are easily dispatched or tanked, the juicy Vindicator is kept damped, perma-jammed, and/or at range while the opposing team piles on the hurt, removing it from the field. The remaining cool kids either cow to their new spaceship overlords and give up the ghost, or angrily disconnect in a fit of “my win button is broken” nerd-rage

Team Rupture:

I have a pretty sweet spot in my heart for the Ruppy. In fact, it might just be my favorite ship in the game to fly, as I can tell you, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of pewing down a shiny mission bear in a Battleship while in a t1 cruiser. seriously, its hilarious).

As an ode to the noble Ruppy, a mean, scrappy team of all Rupture hulls would be, in my opinion, both awesome and hysterical. This may be the closest thing to a serious team setup in this whole list.

3x Muninn (39pts)

4x Rupture (32pts)

1x Broadsword (12pts)

1x Claymore (16pts)

Total: 99pts

To be clear, this setup is probably doomed from the outset. But hey, if active, dual-tank Machariels are winning qualifying matches, anything goes. My standard active armor tank Ruppy fit puts out close to 470 DPS, keeps a tiny sig, and reps up 230 hp/s, all pre-boosts. Potentially you could skip the Broadsword in favor of an Onieros, at which point you’d swap out the medium reppers on the Ruptures for armor explosive hardeners to assist your Logi. This would potentially be quite a mean little swarm of cruisers.

Meanwhile, your 3 obviously arty-fit Muninns kite at long-range, sniping primaries in the ass from 90km out. The Broadsword is there purely in keeping with “Team Rupture”, and quite honestly, doesn’t bring much the party aside an obscenely beefy shield tank in a mostly armor tanking team, as I’m pretty sure bubbles are a no-go (not so mention somewhat pointless) in the tournament. Again, a Logistics ship would probably eke this from “crap setup” to “less crap setup”. The Claymore is there for fleet boosts and some probably much needed DPS. Unless you go a little nuts though and armor tank it (active dual tank Machs…), it’ll go down like the Hindenburg.

Again, weak setup all around, but I’d be the happiest Rupture pilot around watching this thing in action.

Team Angry Bear:

Imagine a scenario, an alternate universe maybe, where all those hemorrhoidal, neck-bearded, mouth-breathing, rage-y mission bears banded together and somehow got themselves into the Tournament as one jaded little Alliance. They would most likely name themselves something hugely serious and “hardcore” sounding, probably with a LoTR or some other fantasy reference like “Blades of Elendil” or “Knights of Kaos Delta Force. Dot”, and good money says they would show up with nothing short of the following:

2x CNR (40pts)

1x Megathron Navy Issue (20pts)

1x Dominix, RR-fit, duh (17 pts)

1x Golem (17pts)

1x Drake (10pts)

Total: 104 pts

Because everyone knows, nothing boosts poor piloting skills like an expensive ship, right? ….right?

Team Angry Bear, clouded by rage, and with senses dulled by repeatedly blitzing Serpentis Extravaganza during 9-day school vacation Eve marathons, somehow fails at math and brings 104 points to a 100 point match. Screegs however feels a touch of pity for the dull-witted halfwits behind Angry Bear, and allows them to participate none-the-less, minus the Drake of course. Drake pilot subsequently threatens to kill all of CCP in real life on a forum vent and unsubs from Eve for approximately 36 hours.

Angry Bear starts off promisingly enough, being ridiculously cap stable (what with all those cap relays), and brimming with target painters and tractor beams. Things turns radically south though about 30 seconds into the fight when it becomes woefully apparent that no one on the team has managed to fit any sort of tackle or propulsion mods. Furthermore, they are all tanked exclusively for Serpentis rats. The Golem is primaried, followed quickly by the CNRs, while a lone t1 frigate solos down the RR Domi. The Navy Mega logs off in an apparent attempt to save his ship. Prognosis: Hilarious.

Team Blogger:

Consisting of 12 writers from the Eve Blog Pack, including Rixx Javix, Ripard Teg, Kirith Kodachi, Susan Black, Penny Ibramovic, Seismic Stan, Mark726, Mike Azariah, Blake Armitage, Kane Rizzel, Marc Scaurus, and hell, me, Team Blogger delves into planning their setups MONTHS before the tournament. A combined 147 blog posts (97 from Ripard alone), 4 blog banters, 39 Eve-O forum threads, 7 failheap threads, a Kugu super-thread, and 52 #tweetfleet polls give them a sizable starting plot to work from, and the wordcounts climb as the date approaches.

Sadly, much like the Traveling Wilburys, too much awesome is too much to handle, and Team Blogger starts to fragment as they continue to hyper-analyze different fits, possible outcomes, the design of the ships, and the very idea behind the tournament itself in endless discussions and self-serving rants. On the day of the Tournament, disaster strikes.

As the team lands on grid at range, the tension and miscommunication hits a fever pitch: Rixx, Marc, and Kane begin opening fire on everyone with a sec status above -7, and Susan realizes that half of us are set red to her and also begins to fire on fleet. As the chaos escalates, it is further apparent that Penny is actually nowhere to be found, having been unable to scan her way out of WH space in time, and Mike begins awarding everyone present with random Gallente hulls. Ripard and Kirith begin drifting dangerously close to arena boundaries as they begin a heated discussion in local over which fits would have more effectively tanked Rixx’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, while Stan and Mark accidentally warp out while attempting to write down the resulting diatribe for later in-canon posterity in downloadable PDF form. Meanwhile, I find myself booted from system by Screegs, as it becomes apparent I’ve warped a neutral Orca on grid.

The actual team setup is irrelevant, as we’re all permanently banned from even talking about the Alliance Tournament ever again by a very stern, yet oddly choppy-voiced Soundwave.

Best of luck in round 2 of the qualifiers to everyone competing. Now go make some pretty explosions.

-Aiden

~ by Aiden Mourn on July 8, 2012.