Marshal - First Kill

So I did tell someone at fanfest I would be the first kills and losses on the Marshal, but some people beat me to it with some kills early in the day, I missed all the memes, the e-mail and such until reddit told me last night that they were out earier than I expected. So I knew I had to go ahead and lose it, but wanted to get some kills on the way at least and make a good story. Red vs Blue has a pretty interesting history of whelpage, although usually within RvB or in a special event like low sec+ Tama gate camp suicide charges. I fit it in abt 10 mins and made a few big mistakes I didn’t notice until later. Oddly enough, since the ship was free the fit was cheap, but I couldn’t upgrade both my clone implants and get a second DS EANM so I bought a 3rd Faction Magstab and some skill hardwiring and drugs instead, drooling at 1350 DPS but not realizing I accidentally fit a nanobot accelerator rig instead of a nano pump, and also decreased my EHP and rep rate pretty significantly by dropping the EANM, but didn’t want to put a T2 or faction next to that A-Type. I almost turned it into a AC + Web kiter or a Hull Vindi, but had to calm my blasters down and keep it half sane. I knew there would be cap pressure but really wanted the Neut and SB, kinda going for a strong tank but one that could take our cruisers and BCs easily with it’s 13-1400 DPS in order to mitigate incoming DPS rather than simply rep it more easily but not kill anything. Anywho, strategy of the 10 minute fitting worked well, but definitely could have improved, haha. I meant to go lose it in a fun fire, and did.
A small RvB roam fleet was in Black Rise but I was waiting for RL to settle down, so I fit it mostly in the simulator on my way to jita, bought the fit and redeemed it, and headed to Black Rise, docked up in HS until I could actually play. When I did the fleet was ending, so I went solo, and didn’t scout or hunt for easy pickings, just avoided a couple ppl I knew would drop caps or bring a huge blob. When I saw Cpt Blastahoe in local I said hi, then realized, hey he never has more than a handful of guys in his gang, and he give pretty good fights, so I told him I wasn’t in fleet or carrying a cyno, ‘cash me ousside’ and warped to a large complex at range. He told me his guys were freaking out on comms so I told him don’t bait me too hard or gank me too bad, just get out and come play.
Initially a captor scouted and held me while Cpt Blasahoe’s Rattlesnake warped at 0 and got me scrammed and began the fight, while the BCs and Omen Navy stayed at range and gently caressed me from 40-60km ish. I popped a strong exile and had also opted for the Agency Damage III booster rather than the tank one, and my bad Red Safety habit meant I only got a 1% bonus to rep from sec status, because I had just repaired with Security Tags from -1.9 to +0.1, a habit some people have in RvB so we can fight in Hisec with RvB but still kill neuts in low sec.
I was repping pretty well on the first minute, but had to heat more and more as the fight progressed, and that’s where the issues came.  I missed some heat cycles on the Cap injection, and bc of the nanobot accelerator rig I had a lot more cap pressure than I would have with the Aux Nano Pump rig. They realized I was serious about not having a cyno when I smartbombed a wave of damage drones from the BCs, and some EC-drones and put neuts on the Rattler. He baited me well and I had him into armor, but the bait worked. By the time I switched to try to smash the BCs that closed in for the kill, I was under much more pressure, and at 40k ish total EHP the thing popped pretty quick once into low armor and repping hard from 0% to 60% ish each cycle.  There was some good banter, no real trash talk during or after the fight. I did get to see the pretty baller explosion of the beauty but then realized I should probably get my pod out before I get too enamored. I did get the pod out, not to a safe, but right on station, and was able to dock before anyone got close to me or on grid, they were still looking at the explosion, killmail, and looting. Cpt Blastahoe was thrilled and all his guys gave Gfs in local, and he gave me a consolation bhaalgorn with faction/DS mods through a trade after the fight.
So sadly I didn’t get any kills since I gave up on one-shotting the ceptor, but since the first dozen kills by the Marshal are mostly crap, I don’t think it’ll be too hard to get a few good killmarks next time. But still, for the first time in a while I actually had some adrenaline in a fight, and it was good fun, glad to wake up to the note from CCP Falcon, reddit, and EN24 haha.  I didn’t expect much of anything to be said, but most of the response is pretty funny and positive, only a few scrubs like some guy named Apothne mad at my shit fit. But as of now I have traded a NYX and sold a few assets to get the USS CONCORDOKKEN II, with an updated fit from the CONCODOKKEN 1, which will be more carefully memed next time especially since I payed ISK for it lol.
I just figure that the majority of these will never see combat, a few ppl might solo with them now and then, or try pipe bombing to farm kills, and a few people will set up kills or use them in BLOPS gangs or fleets, but even that will be a small group. Toys are meant to be played with, not just shown off or put on a shelf. After flying it I am realizing it’s strong potential in a lot of arenas, especially stuff like the alliance tournament or BLOPS fleets as opposed to bomber fleets, since their tank, DPS, and tackle are so strong compared to the avg BLOPS. Gotta work on that Sec status though, that extra rep power might have saved my bacon and had 5 killmarks instead of a skid mark!
Fly Dangerous
and thanks