My God, it's full of stars!

Whew!  Day 3 over and what a lot of good fights to be heard and watched (once CCP gets out the vids) – and so far they have been quick to post aftergame matches on their http://www.youtube.com/ccpgames video website.  Looking forward to watching them!

A number of surprises:  teams that looked like a real good bet still losing, and also quite a few nail-biter matches as well as a number of blow outs.

But it should be no surprise to those of you who have been following my BLOG, DPS setups were definitely stepped up today, although the use of E-War setups certainly not out of the ring by any stretch.  Perhaps the biggest mistake made today by a few Alliance teams was going too extreme on their DPS – and either not having enough tank or enough E-War (pro or con).  Thus having the right ship type mix & balancing is very important.

But conspicuously missing from the majority of setups were previous weekends dominating Caldari Rooks.  In fact, I counted only 7 Rooks deployed, while observing a significant surge in the number of Battlecruisers fielded: with you guessed it, the Caldari Drake at the top of the list, followed with the Brutix and Harbingers - both by the way, doing well.

The Logistic ships Guardian, Scimitar, Basilisk & Oneiros also continued to be deployed with success, the Guardian markedly being on the winning team 6 out of the 8 rounds it was used.

And what an explosion of ship types fielded … way way gone are the Tournament VI single theme  ship setups.  I count a total of 64 different ship types were fielded today alone.  And if tomorrow is anything like today, the ship variance will be even greater than last week’s 90 different ships.  I think this is a real win for the new “limit by 2 ship name types” rule introduced by CCP.

Now also interestingly enough, more setups fielded were in the billion isk range, but only a single alliance  spent more than 2bil.   To my surprise, very much missing were the Amarr  Paladin Marauders that proved so successful last weekend (Paladins did not lose a single round or ship with a 0% ship-loss record and 100% win) and glaringly missing today were the Marauder Golems, not a single Golem fielded.   Brick sQuAD was the only alliance to field Marauders and interestingly fielded the Gallente Kronos rather than Paladins or Golems.  Brick sQuAD also won their round convincingly and were the one alliance that fielded 2 billion worth of ships.  The only explanation I can come up with for the down-turn in the high-end monster ships not being fielded was many Alliances may have decided to field more DPS and felt more Battlecruisers and Battleships would get the job done without spending the extra billions.  In several cases this indeed proved right, but I think in some rounds, the extra tanking and DPS of a Marauder or two could have made a difference.

Along with today’s trend of not fielding the more expensive hulls we also saw less T3’s deployed than last weekend.  The Tengu still continuing to be the more popular of the T3’s, but only 7 were in setups, less than half of last weekend’s 20.  No Legion or Loki at all, but surprisingly, despite it’s poor performance last week, 2 Proteus’s were bravely deployed and won the matches they were in with no ship losses, while on the flipside, the Tengu which did perform well last week  losing in 4 out of the 6 rounds.  So these T3’s – still hard to tell their tournament value given the amount of isk and research required to build and fly one of these beasts.

We did see as expected more Battleships fielded today, but with not as much success as I might have guessed.  Ravens destroyed and losing the two rounds they were deployed, Dominix winning 7 but also losing 6 rounds (but definitely more of them used today),  and the Abaddon, a tournament favorite that did well in Tourney 6 and did well last weekend, coming out with a 5 win and 5 loss side record.   Personally, I still think Battleships, Battlecruisers and higher DPS setups are the way to go this tourney, but these setups have to be well thought out and balanced to counter the inevitable E-War that should be and will be present.  There were a number of tactical mistakes using Battleships, and a number of poor opening game decisions – so important when running a higher DPS setup.

Destroyers given how well they did last weekend, and given their extreme DPS, I wasn’t surprised seeing them fielded en force as they were.  The most popular the Minmatar Thrasher deployed 10 times, and we even saw the Gallente Catalyst a few times.  However, I think many alliances were expecting Destroyers and they melted really quick (as would be expected) in the rounds they were deployed – but didn’t prove as effective as last weekend, on the whole, being on the losing side more often than winning.  Why this was the case may be because just a lot more DPS was present today than last weekend, making it a more dangerous environment for the paper-thin hulls of Destroyers.

Which brings me to the Nighthawk Field Command ship which doesn’t have a paper-thin hull.  The Nighthawk yet again turned up with positive results being on the winning side 5 out of the 7 rounds it was deployed.  And last weekend, the Nighthawk had a 53% win side ratio – still on the positive ledger side.  And ship loss ratio today for the Nighthawk remained low at 43% the same ship-loss ratio as last weekend.  So the Nighthawk continues to prove its worth in this tournament as it did (even more dramatically) in Tournament VI.

Also worth mentioning was the  deployment of the Iteron Mark V in one of the rounds, and actually being on the winning side this time.  Which I think establishes Itty’s low 3 point cost and potential tactical jamming/boosting as now a viable setup option, even though many of us laughed when we first saw it flying around (apparently aimlessly looking for a hauling contract) last week.

Before I end this post, I want to thank all the great commentators of the matches – you guys IMO did an excellent job in painting a picture with words what was happening out there.  I also enjoyed listening to New Eden’s Radio follow-ups and analysis and the in-game neweden-radio chat channel – which often had me cracking up with some of the great humor that was going around.  Sigh – even with all this analysis I’ve been doing, it was tough trying to guess the outcomes of the matches, and I am so embarrassed at my win/loss record  guesses I’m not even going to let people know how poorly my guestimates faired (let’s say it was less than half).  While I believe Lord Malachai came out with an extremely positive win/loss guestimate ratio.  Damn I’m green with envy.

o/