Earlier today in the system of O-PNSN, Black Legion. began harassing HERO members throughout the day. As the day wore on with BL fleets moving up and down the pipe, the decision was made to hit BRAVE SBUs in the system. This was done seemingly to provoke a fight. The three gates in the system apparently already had defensive SBUs which were quickly blasted down and replaced with onlining BL ones.
This resulted in an immediate skirmish between HERO with a mixed Maller and Moa fleet, and BL with Cynabals. The engagement went about as well as expected with HERO being forced to temporarily disengage even while dropping the Cynabals after heavy fighting.
The 3-hour online time for these structures was left uncontested by HERO for a short time until Blue Ice and other leadership decided to form a larger response fleet to attempt to take down the offending SBUs. A ~200 man HERO fleet, made up of their typical Eagle/Tengu doctrine and Scythe Logistics with light Ewar and bomber support moved into the system. They quickly encountered resistance from Black Legion, who opted for a ~80-man mixed bag of T3s and Guardians to support a pair of Triage Archons. BL also camped the pipe to O-P from YZ- with Sabres and other delay ships to slow down reinforcements.
The fight began in earnest at around 00:00 on June 13 with the two fleets positioning on the D-Q04X gate in O-P. As the HERO fleets focused on killing the Archons and Guardians to remove BL reps, they found a fleet that was fairly capable of resisting the incoming DPS. The small Ewar and bomber wings assisted in being a distraction, forcing BL to hit them as opposed to the DPS ships. This allowed HERO DPS to slowly take T3s off the grid. The trend of trading ship for ship continued for several tense minutes as pilots popped on both sides.
Eventually, the Guardians were blown off-grid, meaning the crucial element of BL’s strategy started to fall apart. Enough of BL’s ships had died that they were unable to keep destroying HERO ships. This led to them temporarily pulling out and both sides ordering a reinforcement reship. In the intervening time, HERO focused it’s fire, damps and everything under the sun on the Archons.
BL did finally return with two separate fleets, one wing of Tengus and the remnants of the initial T3 mixed fleet. HERO were able to reinforce with a large wing of mixed Logi to sustain their remaining DPS. It was at this point that the battle turned entirely in HEROs favor as the SBU on the D-Q gate went down and HERO began dropping Tengus. (Yours truly died to those Tengus by warping into a bubble and getting blapped instantly after surviving nearly the entire fight.) HERO were able to drop replacement SBUs and grab two Archon kills. So good guys win again.
