Dystopia Alliance vs Rough Necks

Qualifying Round 1 - Saturday 5th September - 17:00

Rough Necks Steal Victory from Dystopia Alliance

Reported by: Clarity Brown

A match with startling gambits from both sides ended with victory for small-gang specialists Rough Necks [RAGE] against the notorious villains of the Guiding Hand Social Club, flying under the banner of Dystopia Alliance [SINGE].



Dystopia leader Tyrrax Thorrk dismissed all rumours that they either had spies on the other team or were paid to throw the match as "Lies. Filthy lies."

Dystopia Alliance: Widow | Eos | Basilisk | 2 x Rook | Falcon | 2 x Kitsune | Cormorant | Iteron Mark V

Rough Necks: Damnation | 2 x Dominix | 2 x Griffin | Ishkur | 2 x Paladin

Rough Necks set up to go toe-to-toe right from the starting burst, while Dystopia put their e-war heavy fleet a good distance back from the beacon.

When the match began, Rough Necks put out flights of ECM drones in the hopes of counter-jamming Dystopia's e-war ships. Dystopia Alliance set up a network of shield and capacitor transfers with Tyrrax Thorrk acting as "mobster momma" to the SINGE team, dishing out nourishment and support to her team from her Basilisk. Hamish, in the mysterious Iteron V [SINGE], revealed its purpose as it started to transmit remote sensor boosts and ECCM.

The Rough Necks' assault looked innocuous at first. The two Paladins crept slowly towards the cluster of Dystopia ships. DAX ZAIR [RAGE] lost his Griffin swiftly, but his team swiftly redressed the damage, hitting Don ZOLA's Falcon [SINGE] with every bit of hate a pilot has ever felt for a Falcon. With his destruction, they turned their eyes to the Dystopia Rook, while Dystopia tried a few test shots on the Rough Neck's Damnation - a very, very well-defended ship - with only a brief pause to take out Zal Banes' Griffin [RAGE].

Meanwhile, well to the rear of the battlefield, RAGE's Warden II sentry drones hammered heavily into the opposing team, but RAGE took another casualty as SINGE picked off Tio Key's Ishkur to try and stop the damage from those sentry drones. The RAGE Paladins, though, had closed on the main knot of SINGE ships and were putting the Basilisk under heavy pressure, though Thorrk was managing to keep herself in good repair. It showed, however, that the focused e-war strategy was not locking down the enemy as solidly as hoped.

Even if it had, there is not a jammer in the cluster that could stop what happened next.

The Rough Necks' Paladins, flown by Archa and Syra Tpal were in a position where the SINGE fleet was tightly clustered between them. They turned on the smartbombs. The entire SINGE fleet started taking damage from both ships, all at once. Ms. Thorrk identified this as one of the moments that cost them the match.

The other moment was about to happen. SINGE started to fan out, trying to mitigate the damage the smartbombs could do to them. Then NTRabbit [SINGE] in the Eos slipped outside the Basilisk's transfer range and the RAGE Paladins and Dominixes (flown by FoxyTang0 and Steve Bailey) were all over him. The Eos went down fast and with it, the information warfare links that had so bolstered the SINGE team's ECM.

From there in, Rough Necks held the upper hand and used it ruthlessly. Xiadown's Rook melted under the relentless lasers, then Trillian Firefly's Cormorant burst into vaccuum (both flying for SINGE). She was swiftly followed by Zeraph Dregamon's Rook, leaving the SINGE e-war badly dented.

Tyrrax Thorrk's [SINGE] Basilisk, the "Impending Failure" was next on the target list and lived up to its name. Ulrah [SINGE] fell seconds later, his Kitsune, the "Impotent" becoming no more than an ironically-named mass of twisted scrap. It was rapidly joined by Istvaan Shogaatsu's "Shoot Me, I'm Famous" - another Kitsune.

shone, fighting for Dystopia Alliance, was left alone in his Widow with only Hamish in the Iteron V to protect him, while FoxyTang0, Steve Bailey (Dominixes), Archa and Syra Tpal (Paladins) all closed in on his position. When the clump of ships parted again, the Widow wreck was simply named "Brown."

The Iteron V was left all alone in the sky. It had formiddable defences, every low power slot stuffed with armor plating, but there has never been a documented case of anyone being sensor boosted to death and it didn't happen here either.

Rough Necks cleared the field with 2 Dominix and 2 Paladins still in hand.