Why Does Rixx Have a Rook?


My good friend Drackarn beat me to this story today.

TLDR; I did indeed undock in a Rook over the weekend and briefly set-up a Recon trap in a medium plex.

I have over 150 fitted ships in my hangars, many spread around The Citadel and Black Rise, but most of them in my primary hangar in Ishomilken. A handful of them are fitted up for "special needs" as I call them, a Lachesis, an Arazu, a Rook and a few others. I even have a RLM Drake for fighting swarms of small ships. (Just a week or so ago there were 30+ frigates in a large plex and I took the Drake over to play, killed 2 or 3 of them before the rest ran off, was good fun.) I can honestly tell you that I do not own a Falcon. So why the Rook?

Its important to keep in mind that, in addition to being a solo and small gang pilot in New Eden, I am also the CEO of Stay Frosty and the Alliance Executor of A Band Apart Alliance. As such my responsibilities extend well beyond just undocking and looking for good fights, although that is what I mostly do. There is more to it than that. I am also the main content driver when I am on-line. I find fights, or draw fights, or take fights, or otherwise stir things up for the Corporation and our players to enjoy. I also serve as primary target for our pilots in most fights, 99% of the time I am the first target in any engagement. I also undock silly expensive things to break up station camps, or gate camps. And I also warp in and help ANYONE that is in trouble. And it is that last thing that made me start keeping fitted Recons in the hangar. Something I never did before.

But once Recons became immune to d-scan we started seeing them pop up from time to time. Since then about a half-dozen or so opportunities have arisen to form up to take them down. And in some of those cases, due to low numbers usually, I will take a Recon to defeat a Recon. It just makes sense. To catch a Recon baiter it is sometimes useful to become a Recon baiter.

And so this weekend it happened again. A Recon baiter who was using a Rook was found nearby and we only had a half-dozen or so pilots available to us. So I didn't hesitate, I undocked the Rook and took off to catch him. I made it clear in fleet chat that this was temporary and that I felt "dirty" doing it, but it was worth the chance. During the time when we were setting up inside a Medium plex a Firetail warped into us. I killed him without hesitation. He wasn't happy about it in local, understandably so. I wouldn't be happy about it either. In fact, I wasn't happy about it earlier when the same thing happened to me.  Those are the peeps we were after.

The other Recon pilot got away. And I docked up the Rook and got back into a Frigate. I don't apologize for using a Rook to catch a Rook. I'd do it again in a second. I also don't apologize for all the deaths I suffer because I'm often primary, or I warp in to help a fellow Stay Frosty pilot out of a jam, or the times I get blobbed because of who I am. My game is played on HARD mode every day. And I choose to play that way. I have ships in my hangar to fly, to die and to be used when needed.

And if you are going to use bait Recon tactics in my neighborhood just know that we will hunt you down and kill you. Being an advocate for good fights isn't just writing about it on a blog, it's also about doing something about it in space.

And when it comes to defending my pilots, I put everything I have on the line - everyday.