Wham! Bam! I am..Your Man...

George Michael you say....

No, we had not all turned gay. We just required a naming convention for the 'Gank Tank' cruiser op. We decided that all the ships should be named after famous Wham! songs. In the event that we all died on a gate, it would look like a Wham! discography catastrophe.

The rules for the cruisers were simple. The only type of tank you was allowed was a damage control. The only reason to not use a damage mod in a low slot was to fit a PG mod in order to field bigger guns. Essentially, we were required to squeeze as much damage out of the T1 hull as possible.

This sort of gang suits everyone in The Bastards. The older players such as Ronin, Klymaxx and Frog could easily reach near max damage on said ships. The younger players also don't feel out of place in fielding the same ships. Loth for example flew a Rupture class cruiser alongside 2 Time MVP and childhood hero VB Sarge in the very same ship. Maybe a world apart in total damage output, but still a part of the very same gang.

So many of you may ask, what is the validity of T1 Cruisers? After all, most of you can fly the T2 Heavy Assault Ships anyway? Well let me chuck some figures at you...

The T2 Heavy Assault Ship known as the Deimos will cost you upwards of 100 million for a suitable fitting and the ship hull. You can expect a well rounded pilot to output anything from 750-800 damage per second from it.

The T1 Sibling to it, the Thorax costs a meager 5-6million for the hull and maybe 15 with decent fittings. A well skilled pilot can output 650-700dps from the ship. So in retrospect, we could afford to lose 5 Thorax's for every Deimos and only lose a maximum of 100dps per ship.

The same very much rings true for the Muninn/Rupture too. Omen/Zealot and Caracal/Cerberus are a little different due to fitting problems on the T1 counterparts but can still provide an ample amount of gank for the price.

So the gang was formed...consisting of 5 Ruptures averaging 480dps and 4 Thorax's averaging 530dps. So we are talking of 4500 dps from a gang of ships costing less than 100mil ISK.

In order to test the damage levels, Mr. Frog undocked his plated Dominix battleship which could soak up hundreds of thousands of damage before even worrying about disengaging.

It was a shocking moment, the brick like space cow was reduced to structure in under 15 seconds. The gang was outputting somewhat insane damage.

The gang was then reformed with Mr. Frog jumping back into his Thorax ready to go arrange some nearby havoc in Metropolis. With my Thorax raring to go, amply named WakeMeUpB4UGoGo (Released 1984 on the 'Make It Big' LP) I was ready to break some hearts like I did Last Christmas...okay bad joke. But Last Christmas was being flown by Loth (Released December 1984 on the re-released 'Make it Big' LP)

This is how the Wham! based scanner would look to our enemies! Minus me of course.



Our first port of call after the Dominix slowly regained its armour was to knock on Python's door. After sneaking into their pipe unnoticed, Klymaxx and Sara began to carelessly leave themselves at celestial bodies in Ardar. Low and behold, a roaming Python gang tugged at the line.

The gang jumped in from nearby Floseswyn and proceeded to primary the Hurricane attacking Klymaxx. The remainder of the Python support had warped in at range, providing fewer targets to engage. We were unfortunately too late to save The Edge of Heaven (Released 1986 on the 'Music from the Edge of Heaven' LP), however Kylmaxx's tackle on the Hurricane allowed us to melt it in no less than 5-7 seconds.

After failing to hunt down any of the other ships, (missing a point on the Myrmidon by under 1km) we moved back to Evati. Not 3 minutes after our arrival, a fight was starting upon the Todifraun gate. We had replaced Klymaxx's 'Edge of Heaven' with Flashfresh's more survivable rupture named 'Freedom', yet another epic Wham! hit.

We decided to invite ourselves to the on gate party that was under way. First turning our guns to a Myrmidon which simply disintegrated under the fire. Next a far juicier target. Sitting 4km from the Thorax's was a Sacrilege Heavy Assault Ship with aggro from attacking the same Myrmidon.

Without a second thought, our relentless gang opened up on the 120mil+ investment prior to him being able to jump away to safety. His eyes looked on with a frown at the traffic controller at the gate, shrugging back at him in a 'What Can I do?' sense. 'You engaged the Myrmidon and hence must see out the aggression sir'

Without another heartbeat missed, Wham! squad opened fire, reducing the ship that would cost more than our entire fleet to dust in seconds.

Whilst this skirmish was taking place, a Stabber Fleet Issue ship had been demonstrating its superior design for speed in accelerating away from our gang upon the gate. With an average optimal range of around 2km from our blaster and autocannon fitted muderbeasts, the 80km orbit he pulled was a tad out of our firing range.

The stabber then appeared to warp off to a personal safe spot to the untrained eye. To the trained and shrewd analysis from RnProphet, it was in fact the nearby planet to which the stargate was in orbit.

In a standard gung-ho and 'balls deep' fashion, the man with the voice of God, AntonioBanderas followed for a tackle. (You would need to hear the man on Ventrilo, he could melt granite)

Not a minute later, Point! and Web! was called. Bandy's fearsome Rupture had caught the Stabber with his pants down. The gang slowly trickled in laying down some serious damage. Bandy came out of the fight deep into structure with his Rupture hull on fire. Yet not even the now dead Stabber could breach the insatiable 'LoveMachine (Released in 1983 on the 'Fantastic' LP)'

Many of us now were under global criminal from the nifty Stabber kill. RoninData in his 520dps face melter, 'Careless Whisper' (Released 1984, on the 'Make It Big' LP) sat at the Minmatar Control bunker anchored near the Star. Low and behold, the wooshing sound of uncloaking ships could be heard. Two Pilgrim class force recon ships spewed out their drones and began to eat into Ronin's ship.

Like lightning, Wham! squad was in warp. The primary Pilgrim soon becoming webbed, scrammed and without hull hit points. The other Pilgrim had full on cheesed it as the first of us dropped warp, leaving his acquaintance to die a rapid death. Ronin had barely entered armour in his bullet spewing galleon before the fight was over. Real men gank tank.

In a 2 hour period, we had lost 1 Thorax for around a 7mil loss. In return we had killed a Hurricane, Myrmidon, Sacrilege, Fleet Issue Stabber and A Pilgrim totalling upwards of 600million ISK.

Props to Python Cartel for being the only one's to inflict damage on George Michael's career. We all thought Edge of Heaven was a rubbish song anyway...